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YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
'' ALBERT S. COOK, Editor 

XXXI 

EPICOENE 

OR 

THE SILENT WOMAN 

BY 

BEN JONSON 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY 

BY 

AURELIA HENRY, Ph.D. 



A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale 
University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1906 









OXFORD : HORACE HART 
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 



f 



YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
ALBERT S. COOK, Editor 

XXXI 

EPICOENE 

OR 

THE SILENT WOMAN 

BY 

BEN JONSON 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY 

RY 

AURELIA HENRY, Ph.D. 



A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale 
University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
1 906 



Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere 
Sudoris minimum ; sed habet Comoedia tanto 
Plus oneris, quanto veniae minus. 

HoR. Ep. 2. I. i68. 



PREFACE 

Within the last decade editions of Ben Jonson — 
single plays and groups of plays— have multiplied with 
significant rapidity, Epiccene, as the most popular 
comedy of the great Elizabethan, should not be the 
last to be accorded the dignity of a separate volume. 
Contemporary popularity may not indicate the presence 
of lasting qualities of art. Epicoene, however, of all 
Ben Jonson's dramas, was not only listened to with 
most pleasure in its author's day, but it held the stage 
longest, and is now best known to the general reader. 
Such popularity must spring from positive artistic 
merits, Epicoene does not stand first in intellectual 
grasp or moral greatness ; its satire has the tone of 
ridicule rather than moral indignation. But its intrigue 
is the finest Jonson ever contrived ; it contains some of 
the most inimitable of his comic characters, and at least 
one of the best situations any comedy affords ; it reflects 
with due subordination to plot the manners of its age, 
and merits thereby the distinction of being the first 
comedy of manners in English ; it is of perennially 
comic force, infinite in wit, and pervaded by a spirit 
more nearly gay than any other work of its author. 
In addition to these excellences, and in part because 
of them, Epiccene is to-day the most actable stage-piece 
from Jonson's pen. 

This comedy is in no sense difficult to read and 
enjoy, but thorough study discloses in it depth and 
meaning which serious students seldom recognize, 
and casual readers entirely overlook. The realistic 
portrayal of manners leads one to a better under- 
standing of the life and mind of the early seventeenth 
century in England, the satire on false criticism of 



\'i Preface 

poets and poetry conduce to a clearer knowledge 
of Jonson's critical theories, the admirable mechani- 
cal structure exemplifies the extreme of classic in- 
fluence in English comedy, and the heterogeneous 
sources emphasize once more the fact of the author's 
unparalleled scholarship and illustrate the manner in 
which he appropriated and adapted ancient material 
to his use. Moreover, a unique opportunity is here 
afforded for the study of Jonson's prose st3de. His 
other prose comedy, Bartholomew Fair, is in the 
vernacular of Smithfield, but Epicoene, with its men 
and women of fashion, is in the speech of the better 
quarters of London, and is distinguished by Latin 
phraseology, and by constructions and a vocabulary, 
which prove that the influence exerted upon Jonson 
by the classics was one not only of idea and technique, 
but of linguistic expression as well. 

To enable students to approach Ben Jonson through 
an authentic text of Epicoene, and to facilitate such con- 
siderations of the comedy and its author as are here 
suggested, is the purpose of the present edition. 

I wish to express my gratitude to Professor Albert S. 
Cook for his continual interest and help in my work ; 
and to other members of Yale University for their 
kindly assistance — Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury, 
Professor William Lyons Phelps, and Mr. Andrew 
Keogh ; also to Professor Frederick M, Padelford, of 
the University of Washington, and Mr. Frederick J. 
Teggart, of the Mechanics' Library of San Francisco. 

A portion of the expense of printing this thesis has 
been borne by the Modern Language Club of Yale 
University, from funds placed at its disposal by the 
generosity of Mr. George E. Dimock, of Elizabeth, 
New Jersey, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1874. 

A. H. 

British Museum, 

January 2, 1906. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. 


INTRODUCTION : 

A. Editions of the Comedy. 






I. Coilations and Descriptions 


xi 




2. Stage- Adaptations 


xviii 




3. Translations 


XX 




E. Date and Stage- History 


xxii 




C. Literary Relationships .... 


xxvii 




I. Sources of the Plot. 






Libanius 


xxviii 




Plautus 


xxxiv 




Shakespeare 


XXXV 




2. Sources of the Dialogue . 


xli 




Ovid 


xlv 




Juvenal 


i 




Canon-Law, Sophocles, Euripides 


liii 




Cicero, Virgil, Horace 


hv 




Terence 


Iv 




3. Source of the lyric ' Still to be neat ' . 


Iv 




4. Literary Descendants . . . . 


Ivii 




D. Critical Estimate of Epicoene 


Ixi 


II. 


TEXT 


I 


III. 


NOTES 


123 


IV. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


278 


V. 


GLOSSARY 


284 


VI. 


INDEX 


300 



INTRODUCTION 

A. Editions of the Play. 

I. Collations and Descriptions. 

The earliest extant text of Epicoene is in vol, i of the 
First Folio of Ben Jonson's collected works, printed in 
1616. The only available quarto of Epicoene bears a date 
four years later, 1620. The play is reprinted in vol. i of 
the Second Folio of Jonson's works, 1640, and in the Third 
Folio, 1692 ^ In a duodecimo volume issued by H. Hills 
about 1700, Epiccene is reprinted from the Third Folio. 
During the centuries that follow there are many reprints. 
A booksellers' edition of Jonson appeared in 1716 ; Epicoene 
(dated 1717) was reprinted in 1739 and 1768. A two- 
volume edition, printed at Dublin in 1729, contains, among 
its eight plays, Epicoene reprinted from the Third Folio. 
Peter Whalley edited the comedy in his edition of 1756. 
George Colman adapted it for the Georgian stage, printing 
it in 1776. John Stockdale reprinted Whalley's text and 
notes in a publication of the plays of Jonson, Beaumont, 
and Fletcher, 181 1. William Gifford's edition of Jonson 
was published in 181 6, and again in 1846 ; it was reissued 
with some additions by Lieut.- Col. Francis Cunningham 
in 1871, and again in 1875^. There is an unimportant 
reprint of Gifford's text of Epiccene in Barry Cornwall's 
one-volume edition of Jonson, 1838; another in Ben 
Jonson's Plays and Poems, edited by Henry Morley in his 

^ For collations of these folios, cf. Poetaster, ed. H. S. Mallory ( Yale Studies 
in English XXVII), New York, 1905. 

2 For collations of 1717, W, G, and C-G, cf. The Alchemist, ed. C. M. 
Hathaway {Yale Studies in English XVII), New York, 1903. 



X Introduction 

Universal Library, 1885 ; another, with few variations, in 
the third of the three volumes devoted to Jonson in the 
Mermaid Series, 1895 ; and another in Ben Jonson's Plays 
and Poems, printed by George Newnes, London, 1905. 
There is, finally, an adaptation of the play by Mrs. 
Richardson, printed and sold by Charles W. Sever, 
Cambridge, Mass., 1895. 

The statement that the earliest available text of Epiccene 
is the Folio of 1616 raises the long-mooted question of 
earlier quartos. There exists a certain amount of evidence 
pointing to the publication of the play at dates closely 
following its appearance on the stage in 16^^. In 
the first place, there are two entries of its publication in 
quarto, in the Registers of the Company of Stationers oj 
London, before the printing of the folio. The first is 
vol. 3. 444 [200 b of Arber's Transcript'] : 

20™° Septembris (1610). 

John Browne Entred for their Copye vnder th[e h]andes of Sir George 

John Busby Bvcke and master Waterson for master warden Leake, 

Junior. A booke called, Epiccene or the silent woman by 

[See/. 498.] Ben: Johnson vj"* 1 . 

The second entry is ibid. 3. 498. [226 v] : 

28 Septembris (161 2). 
Walter , Burre ( Entred for his copie by assignment from John Browne and 

consent | of the Wardens in full Court holden this Day | . 
See p. 444. A booke called the Conwiodye of ' the Silent Woman ' vj*. 

To these entries Gifford makes reference in his Intro- 
duction to Epiccene, Jonson's Works 3. 326: ^ThQ Silent 
Woman was printed in quarto with this motto : 

Ut sis til sit?iilis Cccli, Byrrhique latronum, 

Non ego sim Capri, neque Sulci. Cur metuas me ? 

and went through several editions. I have one dated 1620. 
The Companion to the Playhouse mentions another, printed 
in 1609 (as does Whalley in the margin of his copy), which 
I have not been able to discover ; the earliest which has 
fallen in my way bearing date 161 2. All these are ex- 
clusive of the folio 1616.' 



Editions of the Play xi 

The notice in the Companion to the Playhouse is of little 
value, as it contains no evidence that the writer ever saw 
the quarto of which he speaks briefly in vol. i : ' Epicoene, 
or The filent Woman. Com. by Ben Jonfon, 4*°. 1609. — 
This is accounted one of the beft Comedies extant, and is 
always adled with univerfal Applaufe.' 

The references to the Quartos of 1609 and i6ia in 
modern bibliographies of Jonson's works, or of the drama, 
are made always on the three authorities quoted above, the 
Stationers Registers, Baker's Companion to the Playhouse, 
or Gifford's note. Both quartos are spoken of as existent 
by Hazlitt, Bib. Handbk. to Early Eng. Lit. (L. 1867), 
p. 307 ; by Lowndes ; by the BibliotJieca Heberiana, &c. 
Dr. Herford mentions only the Quartos of 1609 and 1620 
in his biography of Jonson, D.N.B. There is a vain dis- 
cussion of the early quartos in Notes and Queries, 9th 
Sen, 4, pp. 87, 152, 197. 

No effort to find trace of the present existence of quartos 
earlier than one of 1620 meets with success. A communica- 
tion sent by me to Notes and Queries, August 23, 1903, 
asking for information on the subject, received no answer, 
nor did a similar advertisement by Mr. Percy Simpson, 
Dr. Herford's coadjutor in the edition of Ben Jonson to be 
published at the Oxford Press. If the records of the 
stationers could be implicitly trusted, the question of the 
quartos would never have arisen ; that the quartos had 
been published would be recognized, while the passing of 
three centuries would account for the non-appearance of 
a single stray copy. But many books were registered 
which never saw the light ; an entry indicated merely that 
printing was contemplated. Certainly, in the case of two 
entries, and for a play so popular as Epicoene, evidence is 
in favor of its having reached the printer's hands at least 
once. However, the present editor agrees with Dr. Herford 
that the evidence is insufficient to establish the existence 
at any. time of the missing quartos. As for Gifford, 



xii Introduction 

perhaps in this point, as in many others, he has * made 
a slip'. 

The results of this discussion are patently unsatisfactory, 
nor does the identification of a disputed quarto in the 
British Museum help matters. In this library are two 
quartos of the comedy, one dated 1620, and one wanting 
the title-page and following leaf. It has been thought that 
the undated quarto might belong to an earlier impression, 
but on examination they prove to be identical in readings, 
type, and pagination. Not only are misprints precisely the 
same in both, but whatever type is blurred or poorly set in 
one is blurred or poorly set in the other. Cf nothing, 
ANOTHER 7 ; on for our i . i. 48 ; ^/ for buti. i. 73 ; seme 
for semes i. i. 122 ; grat for great i. 4. 48 ; Johnson 2. 2. 
119 ; zvork for workes 2. 3. 23 ; DAVP. where the Folio mis- 
prints DAV. for DAW. 2. 3. 126; tls 2. 4. loi ; sirkts 
2. 5. 77; iliis omitted 3. i. 24; adingd for iiidg'd 3. 2. 
58 ; Ladishis 3. 6. 100 ; MN. bcates vpon him for hcates 
hint 4. 2. 104 ; so omitted 4. 4. 22 ; her for Jiim 4. 4. 
81; DAW. for DAV. 4. 5. 132; inginer for ingine 4. 6. 
47 ; so omitted 5. 2. 4 ; againe inserted 5. 3. 8 ; ivanc 
for want 5. 3. 245 ; with 5. 4. 39 ; gentleman-like -like 
5. 4. 93. The quarto lacking the title-page and following 
leaf is therefore a copy of the edition of 1620. 

Welcome as the discovery of the Quartos of 1609 and 
1 61 2 would be to all students of Jonson, the lack of them 
does not invalidate a text of Epicoene made from the 
earliest folios. Jonson wrote in the dedication to Sir 
Francis Stuart, which he prefixed to the play in the Folio 
of 1 616 : ' There is not a line or syllable in it changed from 
the simplicity of the first copy.' In view of Jonson's 
literary activity at the time, in view of the jealous respect 
he felt for his productions, even to the minutest detail of 
printing and acting, and in view of the excellence of the 
text of Epicoene in that Folio, the author's statement is to 
be taken in its full significance. 



Editions of the Play xiii 

As Epiccene was fortunate enough to require no rearrange- 
ments or additions, as in the case of Every Man in his 
Humoiir, Poetaster, and Sejanus, the editor of this comedy 
need watch only for the inevitable minor changes of the 
text — modernizations, emendations, errors of type, or the 
disagreements of words and phrases which investigation 
shows are traceable to the varying impressions of the First 
Folio itself, which we are now to consider. It does not 
behove us to discuss Jonson's personal super/ision of this 
Folio. That it is not authority in the case of Every Man 
out of his Huinotir^ does not obviate the fact that for 
plays having no earlier quartos it must remain the 
standard. 

Of the Folio of 1616 there are several mutually inde- 
pendent impressions, as indicated by the variations in the 
imprint of the shield at the base of the general title-page, 
and by variations in the texts ^. The folio in the Yale 
University Library reads : LONDON | Printed by \ 
William Stanjby. \ An" D. 1616. [ (F) The text of 
Epiccene in this folio resembles, except in a few instances 
of punctuation, spelling, and typography, one in the British 
Museum reading: LONDON \ printed by W: \ Stanfby, 
and are | to be fould by | Rich : Meighen | An° D. 16 16. | 
(F2) A second in the Museum is unique in appearance, and 
differs through Act i, Act 3. i, and 2, 2 in some important 
readings, in pagination, in type, and in spelling, from the 
first two. It is a handsome book, printed on large paper, 
with the engraving of Ben Jonson by Vaughan, found in 
the 1640 Folio, inserted opposite the title-page. The im- 
print on the shield runs : Imprinted at \ London by | 
Will Stanfby ] An° D. 1616 | (F^) The text of Epiccene 
begins in all three, p. 529, but at the outset the type differs. 
F and F2 read PROLOG VE and F^ PROLOGVE. F^ at 

^ Anglia, New Series, 14, pp. 377 ff., The Atithority of the Ben Jonson Folio 
of 1616. 

^ Mod. Lang. Quart., Apr. 1904, pp. 26-9, W. W. Greg. 



XIV 



Introduction 



once varies in spelling and capitals. The early marginal 
notes of F and Fg are not to be found in F^. Readings vary 
in this way: oncevpon F, otice onY-^^\. i. i6o; bring him 
hi F, bring him Fj, i. i. 173 ; marching F,goingF^, i. i. 181 ; 
a Barber, one Cvtberd, F, a Barber, F^, i. 2. 33 ; &c. All 
variants in these copies of the Folio will be found in their 
order in the text. 

F has been chosen for the present edition, not only because 
it exhibits the most consistency and contains fewest 
apparent errors in reading and type, but because the 
Quarto of 1620 chooses it for reproduction. The selection 
of the text at that time must have been made either by 
Jonson, who among his contemporaries strove most earnestly 
for correctness in his published writings, or by Stansby, who 
was printer of both Folio and Quarto. The text here 
given may be called a reprint of the First Folio, with 
variants of all other important editions. 

The Quarto of 1630 is a clearly-printed little volume, 
containing : Title, one leaf (verso blank). Dedication and 
Persons of the Play, one leaf. Text B — O^ (verso blank) 
in fours. It follows F in all but details of typography and 
spelling, in these matters it is more like F than Fj, e. g. 
PROL. 27, F ord'narieSy F^ ordinaries, Q Ordnaries. 
Where F uses large capitals in the names of persons in 
the scene, speakers, and those addressed, the Quarto uses 
italics, writing also all other proper nouns in italics. 
Capitals are used profusely in the names of the deity, in 
titles — Sir, Madame, &c., and in common nouns, as Play 
PROL. 14 ; Cnstard PROL. 16. Orthographical varia- 
tions are such asj/ for i : plaies ¥,playes Q PROL. i ; praise 
F, prays Q PROL. 1 ; braines F, braynes Q PROL. 7. 
Interjection Mary F is sometimes written marry Q. 
Latinized form of pretious, physitian, 8ic., is generally 
altered (not in physitian, 4. 4. 58). True-wit is usually 
spelled Trn-wit. Abbreviations M. and Mr. are written 
out at length. Jonson is spelled Johnson. 



Editions of the Play xv 

The Folio of 1640 is a reprint of F^, as is clear from 
its failure to reprint the marginal notes of the second 
Prologue and i. i found in F and Q, but omitted in Fj. 
It follows the latter in such readings as those just quoted 
above, and in others : as parlees for preachings, %. a. ^^ ; 
the omission of detow 1. 3. 48, of for i. 4. 40, and wiik 
%. I. 45. This Second Folio is a careless piece of work, 
responsible for errors copied from it into many reprints 
after its time. Such are the making of Mrs. Mavis, the 
La Haughties woman \ printlngpartic/e for article, i. i. 30 ; 
speake for spend, i. i. ^t^ ; master for mistress, i. 4. 79; 
are for and, 2. 3. 132 ; pitch for pith, 3. 3. 45, &c. 
Spelling is modernized : flond and bloud F become flood 
and blood \ furder F hecova&s further ; conj. adv. theji F 
thafi 1640 ; pray thee F pry thee 1640 ; final e is taken 
from words like seate, eate, &c. ; windore F is frequently 
zvindoive 1640; hethcr and thether always spelled with an 
i; and meaning 'if is written ati as 4. i. 140. Sometimes 
1640 makes minor improvements, as when it takes a stray 
hyphen from common place-fellow (a misprint common to 
Folio and Quarto) and reads common-place fellow, 2. 

The Third Folio, 1692, copies all the errors of 1640, and 
adds others, as in the use of quiet for qidt, i. i. 161 ; dif- 
feretice for diffidence, 4. i. 69. Spelling is modernized: 
dds becomes does, 'hem becomes ^em, and meaning * if ' 
uniformly an. Punctuation is much changed, especially in 
the insertion of colons for periods, and in printing clauses 
as independent sentences. 

A duodecimo volume, with no general title-page, con- 
taining reprints of Epicosne, Volpone, The Alchemist, and 
Shadwell's Timon of Athens, is an interesting link between 
the folios and the modern texts. The British Museum 
Catalogue dates it provisionally 1680, but it belongs to 
a time nearer 1700. EPICOENE, | OR, THE | Silent 
Woman I A I COMEDY. I First acted in the Year 1609. 



xvi Introduction 

By the Children of | Her MAJESTY'S | Revels | ... By 
Ben Johnson. | Ut sis . . . | London : | Printed and fold by 
H. Hills in Black- \ Fryars, near the Water-fide \ is mani- 
festly a reprint from 169a. It reprints even such mis- 
spellings of the Third Folio as those in the Persons of the 
Play — Amarous for Amorotis, Eugene for Eugenie. It 
follows 1692 in unique punctuation and readings. That 
it is later than 1692 is further evidenced by the form of 
three words: Cadiz, i. 4. 61, shows a tardy recognition 
of the Spanish dental d, pronounced by the Elizabethans 
as a liquid and written / — in this instance Caliz in all the old 
editions ; wind-fucker is written by H windsucker (cf. note, 
I. 4. 77) ; tyrannes is first printed by H tyrants, 2. 2. 73. 

The next edition deserving comment is Peter Whalley's 
of 175*^- Though Whalley restores some original readings 
of the First Folio, as scratch for search, 4. 5. 24 ; lock for 
look, 4. 6. 39 ; divertendo for diveriendendo, 5. 3. 73, he 
retains such readings of the later folios as quiet for quit, 
and makes ' corrections ' which are unnecessary alterations 
of the text : talk to for talk, i. i. 64 ; thaji to follow for to 
follow, 2. 2. 32 ; next if for next that, if, 2. 2. 129, &c. 
Very carelessly copying 171 7, he makes the first actors 
of the comedy The Kings Servants. It may be noted 
that Whalley's system of punctuation is his own: he 
incloses all verse in quotation-marks, and rejects or re- 
tains Jonson's parentheses as he sees fit. In designating 
new scenes, he is the first editor to omit the word Act 
in all but the first scene of each act ; he is the first to 
insert the name of the speaker who has the opening 
lines, and to run in Jonson's marginal notes either between 
the sentences of a speech or below in foot-notes. His 
spelling is more consistent than his predecessors', and 
reverts less often to old forms : and meaning 'if is uni- 
formly ««', and 'hem with few exceptions 'em. 

The most important modern edition of Jonson's works is 
that published in 181 6 by the poet's aggressive apologist, 



Editions of the Play xvii 

William Gififord. Possessing profounder knowledge in 
classical subjects, and more critical acumen in text values, 
his edition far surpasses Whalley's. He is the first editor 
of Epicoene to adhere to the F imprint of 1616, and to 
consider quarto readings. He corrects errors that are as 
old as Fj itself, restoring the marginal notes of the second 
prologue and i. 1^ preachings iox par lees, 2. 2,. ^^, &c. He 
corrects Whalley's error in substituting The King's Servants 
for The Children of the Revels, and various textual errors, 
but reprints others : than to follow for to follow 2. 2. 32 ; 
have fonnd one for have found 2. 2. 38 ; next for next 
that F, 2. 2. 129 ; a miracle for miracle 2. 4. 98, &c. 
He is freer than Whalley in making emendations, altering 
arrangement, and modernizing his text without comment ; 
he divides acts into scenes according to place instead of 
according to speaker, as was Jonson's custom, and follows 
Whalley in omitting the word Act before all but the first 
scene of each act, in printing the name of the first speaker 
of each scene, and in printing Jonson's marginal notes 
wherever they are most convenient. Moreover, he inter- 
polates stage-directions and explanations of place and 
action. These changes have been deplored often enough by 
recent scholars, yet in their defense be it said that, though 
they stamp Gifford's publication as a popular rather than 
a truly critical edition, they make Jonson more intelligible 
to the general reader. The most valuable part of Gifford's 
work is his notes, which, in the case of Epiccene's classic 
sources, contain almost exhaustive information. 

Gifford's alterations of the text may be exemplified by 
the following : he changes Persons of the Play to Dramatis 
Personcs, alters the order of names, adds titles, calls 
Clerimont's Boy ' Page* &c. In modernizing the spelling 
and forms of words he writes the interjection I '■ ay' \ past 
tenses 'd Y, edQ; d F, on, of G ; ha' F, have G ; 'hem F, 
them or 'em G ; i' F, in G ; th' F, the G ; dds F, does G ; 
pickt F becomes picked G ; God be wi' you G for God f 

b 



xviii Introduction 

w' yoti F, I. 3. 67, I. 2. 84, 2. 2. 140, 148, &c. ; venter F 
is veiittire G passim ; hether F, hither G ; /r^j ///^^ F, 
prithee G. It is impossible to treat exhaustively Gififord's 
changes, but his text is easily accessible in his two editions, 
or in those issued by Cunningham. The last of these, 
printed in 1875 with 'Introduction and Appendices', al- 
though the additions are what Dr. Herford calls 'perfunc- 
tory improvements ', is at present the standard for Jonson's 
complete works. 

In the Mermaid Series Dr. Nicholson was to have edited 
three volumes of the plays of Jonson, but his labor went no 
further than vols, i and 2 issued in 1893-4. Vol. 3, 
containing Volpone, Epiccene, and The Alchemist^ published 
in 1895, contains reprints of Gifford. The text of Epiccene 
is particularly faulty, departing from GifTord's reading with 
and M for are G PROL. 9 ; with mere potent M, more 
portent G, i. 2. 20 ; only a fit M, only fit, 2. 1. 14 ; shoidd 
M, shall G, 3. 3. loi ; his M, the G, 4- 5- 2^, &c. The 
Mermaid text is independent in its method of capitalizing, 
spelling, and typography. 

2. Stage-Adaptations. 
In enumerating the various editions oi Epiccene, mention 
was made of two adaptations for stage production in com- 
paratively recent years. About the middle of the eighteenth 
century the Jacobean comedy lost its hold on the play- 
going public. An altered society judged its situations 
objectionable, its language coarse, and its Latin quotations 
pedantic and unintelligible. For a revival of the play in 
1776 Colman set to work to remedy matters. He began 
by cutting out the old prologues and substituting one of his 
own, the quoting of which will reveal better than much 
comment the spirit and method of the revision : 



Editions of the Play xix 

PROLOGUE. 

Written by George Colman. 

Spoken by Mr. Palmer. 

Happy the soaring bard who boldly wooes, 
And wins the favour of, the tragic muse ! 
He from the grave may call the mighty dead, 
In buskins and blank verse the stage to tread; 
On Pompeys and old Csesars rise to fame, 
And join the poet's to th' historian's name. 
The comick wit, alas ! whose eagle eyes 
Pierce Nature thro', and mock the time's disguise, 
Whose pencil living follies brings to view, 
Survives those follies, and his portraits too; 
Like star-gazers, deplores his luckless fate. 
For last year's Almanacks are out of date. 

' The Fox, the Alchemist, the Silent Woman, 
Done by Ben Jonson, are out-done by no man.* 

Thus sung in rough, but panegyrick, rhimes. 
The wits and criticks of our author's times. 
But now we bring him forth with dread and doubt, 
And fear his learned socks are quite worn out. 
The subtle Alchemist grows obsolete. 
And Drugger's humour scarcely keeps him sweet. 
Tonight, if you would feast your eyes and ears, 
Go back in fancy near two hundred years; 
A play of Ruffs and Farthingales review, 
Old English fashions, such as then were new ! 
Drive not Tom Otter's Bulls and Bears away; 
Worse Bulls and Bears disgrace the present day. 
On fair CoUegiates let no critick frown ! 
A Ladies' Club still holds its rank in town. 
If modem Cooks, who nightly treat the pit. 
Do not quite cloy and surfeit you with wit. 
From the old kitchen please to pick a bit ! 
If once, with hearty stomachs to regale 
On old Ben Jonson's fare, tho' somewhat stale, 
A meal on Bobadil you deign'd to make. 
Take Epiccene for his and Kitely's sake ! 

Within the play Colman made many changes. Act 5. 2, 
in which Dauphine is interviewed by the collegiates, is 
cut out ; the last scenes of this act are much abbreviated ; 
and the tone of the denouement is altered by mollifying 
Dauphine's last speech to his uncle, and cutting down 

ba 



XX Introduction 

True-wit's final remarks. Single speeches are omitted : 
e. g. 3. 5. 40 fif. for their coarseness ; 3. 3 because their 
interest is obsolete. Most of the oaths are omitted, while 
those remaining are altered to modern by-words or inter- 
jections. Archaic words and Jonsonian coinings lose their 
place: e.g. Stoicitie^ i. i. 66 \ a decameron of sport, i. 3 
14; wind-sucker, i. 4. 77, becomes bellows-blower. Local 
allusions are modernized : for him d the sadlers horse, 4. 
I. 25, Colman substitutes St. George d horseback at the door 
of an alehotise. In short, Colman rehashed what was for 
the most part acceptable meat, and served a warmed-over 
meal. The Jacobean flavor is gone. 

In the adaptation of the play made by Mrs. Richardson, 
and presented at Harvard in 1895, a different method is 
used for the most part. To be sure, cuts in Act 5 occur 
at almost the same points as in Colman's arrangement : the 
confession drawn from La-Foole and Daw is omitted, 
Dauphine's dialogue with the collegiates shortened, and 
the discussion concerning divorce in the third scene carried 
only as far as the impediment publice honestas, 5. 3. 158. 
Act 2. 6 is omitted. But as for archaisms, allusions, and 
colloquialisms, they are left as Jonson used them. While 
Colman makes every effort to give the play the contem- 
porary tone and color of ' the town ', here the audience is 
asked to make the concession, to change its usual point of 
view, and to enjoy the whole historically. 

There can be no doubt as to the superiority of the latter 
method and its result. It rightly yields to the require- 
ments of increased refinement in manners, while it preserves 
the integrity of the play. 

3. Translations ^. 
The earliest reference to a translation of Epiccene is by 
Richard Twiss in Travels through Portugal and Spain 
(London, 1775), Appendix, p. 457 : ' In 1769, a Portuguese 

^ Cf. Gifford's note, Jonson's Works 3. 327. 



Editions of the Play xxi 

translation, in three acts, in prose, was published, of Ben 
Johnson's Epiccene : it was acted at Lisbon, though miser- 
ably disfigured.' This I have not seen. 

In 1800 Ludwig Tieck printed at Jena his Epiccene^ oder 
das stumme Mddchen in his Poetisches Journal, Erster 
Jahrgang, zweites StUck, pp. 249-458. Tieck altered this 
version somewhat, and included it in his ScJiriften (Berlin, 
1829) 12. 155-354 under the title Epiccene, oder Das Stille 
Frauenzimmer, Ein Lustspiel in fiinf Akten von Ben 
Jonson. Uebersetzt 1800. The alterations in the reprint 
are of minor importance : the name of the comedy is 
slightly changed ; True-wit is called in the Journal, Treinvits, 
and in the Schriften^ GtUwitz ; some speeches translated 
in the first are omitted in the second, and some omitted 
in the first are left in the second. The Schriften reprint is 
freer and more felicitous in the rendering of English idioms 
than the first, but even then at times the exact meaning 
evades the translator, or the point of a jest is blunted. 
Compare i. i. 128 : * Well said, my Truewit,' ' Gut gesagt, 
mein Treuwitz,' ' Brav, Gutwitz ' ; i. i. 134 : ' O Prodigie ! ' 
* O verflucht ! ' ' O abscheulich ! ' i. i. 184 : ' A good wag/ 
' Ein herrlicher Narr,' * Brav, Kind.' Tieck used Whalley's 
reading, ' When the rest were quiet'' for quit, i. i. 161, and 
translates ' alle Ubrigen feierten '. He translates ' ridiculous 
acts and moniments', i. 2. 9, ' lacherlichen Dinge und Be- 
gebenheiten '. 

Two volumes of plays were translated from Gifford's 
edition into French : Ben Jonson, traduit par Ernest Lafond: 
precedee dune notice sur la vie et les Ocuvres de Ben Jonson. 
Paris, 1863. J^pichte on La Fcmme Silencieuse, T. 2. 
183-370, is a faithful and spirited translation, in which 
but few examples of inadequate rendering may be found. 
Commentaire is a questionable translation of comment 5. 4. 
^^, and race niaiidite inexact for mankind generation, 5. 4. 22. 



xxii Introduction 



B. Date and Stage-History. 

The title-page of the Foh'o of 1616 informs the reader 
that Epicoene was 'Acted in the yeere 1609 by the Chil- 
dren of her Maiesties Revells.' However, since the folio 
dates are all reckoned old style, and since there is other 
testimony as to the season of the year in which the play 
appeared, we must list Epiccene as a production of 1610. 
From the reference in PROL. 34, we know that the comedy 
appeared at the Whitefriars Theatre ; from the statement of 
the title-page, and the appended list of actors, we know that 
the company was the Queen's Revel boys. Now, it was on 
January 4, i60i®o, that Whitefriars Theatre was leased 
by Philip Rossiter and several other men ; very soon after, 
the boys' company was permanently established there. 
So Epiccene must have been presented some time subse- 
quent to the leasing of the theatre, Jan. 4, and previous 
to the opening of the new year on March 25. There is no 
internal evidence pointing to January, February, or March 
as the month of its appearance. The various references 
to the recent plague are accounted for by the revival of 
'the sickness' in September, 1609. 

Epiccene, then, was written during the latter part of 
1609, was presented at Whitefriars by the Children of her 
Majesty's Revels before March 25, 1610, and was entered 
for publication in the Stationers Registers, Sept. 10, 1610, 
at least half a year after its first appearance on the 
stage. 

The success of the play was early assured, the lightness 
of the comedy effecting an instant and enduring popu- 
larity. Beaumont has left a commendatory stanza ^. Some 
anonymous individual early formed the jingling rhyme 
which makes Epiccene one of the trio of Jonson's master- 

^ Cf. note, p. 129. 



Date and Stage-History xxiii 

pieces, and which Swinburne designates as a ' foolish and 
famous couplet ' : 

The Fox, the Alchemist, and Silent Woman, 
Done by Ben Jonson, and outdone by no man. 

Jonson told Drummond^ a joke at the expense of his 
comedy, which Gifford with strange lack of humor re- 
fuses to credit : ' When his play of a Silent Woman was 
first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage 
against him, concluding that that play was well named the 
Silent Woman, ther never was one man to say Plaiidite 
to it.' 

When the theatres reopened after the Restoration Epi- 
coene came back at once to the stage, and was immensely 
popular. It exactly suited an unpoetic generation, to 
whom a clever plot and busy wit appealed more than 
romantic story or character, deeply conceived; a super- 
ficial generation, whose demand for external perfection was 
met by admirable technique, and whose taste for the classics 
was amply gratified in abundant quotation and reference ; 
a generation whose ideal drama must possess 

The iinities of Action, Place, and Time, 
The scene unbroken, and a mingled chime 
Of Jonson's humour and Corneille's rhyme ^. 

The actors interpreted it, doubtless, with all the 
gaiety that characterizes the reactionary period, and 
Jonson's fun fell upon listeners who laughed at the 
V broadest jests, shrank from none of the coarseness, and 
felt no satiric sting in character-drawing or dialogue. 
Fortunately for those interested in the minutiae of its 
history, Pepys cared enough for Epiccene to go often to 
see it, and to record his impressions and those of others. 
He even makes a memorandum concerning the Dukes of 
York and Gloucester, June 6, 1660 : 'The two Dukes do 
haunt the Park much, and they were at a play, Madame 
Epicene, the other day.' Jan. 7, 1661, Pepys saw Kinaston 

^ Conv., vol. 9. 417 ff. * Prologue to The Maiden Qtieen. 



xxiv Introduction 

in the name part : ' Tom and I and my wife to the Theatre, 
and there saw "The Silent Woman." Among other 
things here, Kinaston the boy had the good turn to 
appear in three shapes; first, as a poor gentlewoman in 
ordinary clothes, to please Morose ; then in fine clothes, 
as a gallant ; and in them was clearly the prettiest 
woman in all the house ; and lastly, as a man ; and then 
likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house.' 

Nearly all the great actors and some of the great 
actresses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in- 
terpreted the roles of Epiccene^ Kynaston, Michael Mohun, 
Betterton, Colley Gibber, Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, Macklin, 
and Mrs, Siddons. When it was given in 1664 at the 
Theatre Royal \ the part of Epicoene was assigned to 
Mrs. Knap — the first time, as far as we are aware, but 
by no means the last, that the boy's r61e was taken by 
a woman. In this cast Kynaston played Dauphine, Cart- 
wright Morose, Mohun True-wit, Wintershall Sir Amorous 
La-Foole. Pepys seems not to have enjoyed the perform- 
ance. June I, 1664: 'To the King's House, and saw 
" The Silent Woman," but methought not so well done or 
so good a play as I formerly thought it to be.' But he 
changes his tone when he sees it three years later. April 
15, 1667: 'Carried my wife to see the new play I saw 
yesterday : but contrary to expectation, there I find " The 
Silent Woman." ' On the i6th : ' I never was more taken 
with a play than I am with this " Silent Woman," as old 
as it is, and as often as I have seen it. There is more wit 
in it than goes to ten new plays.' The next year Pepys's 
praise grows more extravagant. Sept. 19, 1668: 'To the 
King's playhouse, and there saw "The Silent Woman"; 
the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote ; and sitting 
by Shadwell the poet, he was big with admiration of it.' 
Dryden was at this time writing unstinted praise of Epi- 
coene in his prefatory essays. 

^ Adams, Did. of the Drayna. 



Date and Stage-History xxv 

The precedent set in giving Epicoene to an actress 
was followed Jan. 1707, when Ann Oldfield acted the part 
at the Haymarket. Betterton appeared as Morose, Wilks 
as True-wit, Booth as Sir Dauphine, Bullock as La-Foole, 
and Gibber as Daw. There is nothing noteworthy of other 
recorded appearances of the play in the following hundred 
years. Mrs. Thurmond appeared as Epicoene at Drury 
Lane, Oct. 1731 ; Mrs. Butler at the same theatre in Feb. 
1738. At Covent Garden, Hannah Pritchard essayed the 
same part, Apr. 17, 1745, but her fame as Lady Haughty 
seems to have been more widespread. 

Epicoene was a distinct failure in a carefully-prepared 
production by Colman and Garrick in 1776. Colman al- 
tered the comedy, as we have seen, to suit ' the town's ' 
ideas of propriety, and Garrick managed the staging, 
assigning Epicoene to Mrs. Siddons, Morose to Bensley, 
La-Foole to King, Otter to Yates^ and Daw to Parsons. 
On its failure, Garrick substituted Lamash for Mrs. 
Siddons ; but matters did not improve. The comedy 
kindled no applause, drew no auditors, and had to be with- 
drawn. Critics reiterate the statement that Garrick's 
failure was due to the fact that a boy's role was inter- 
preted by a woman. Certainly it was an artistic blemish, 
but Epicoene had been successfully interpreted by women 
since 1664. Besides, Lamash's inability to correct the 
fault, and the subsequent history of the comedy, point at 
a deeper-seated reason than the assignment of roles. 
What delighted the hearts of Charles IPs contemporaries 
found little favor in the sight of George HPs. How 
could a generation of fastidious men and women, a genera- 
tion of sentimentalists without keen sense of humor, find 
' profit and delight ' in Lady Haughty and her train, 
and in the ' noisy enormity ' of Mrs. Otter and her humorous 
* subject ' ? Two inimitable comic characters of this epoch, 
with unwitting Pharisaism, express the contemporary 
opinion when one confounds ' anything that 's low ', and 



xxvi Introduction 

the other agrees that ' the genteel thing is the genteel 
thing any time ' ^. 

So, greeted with cold disapproval at her reappearance 
in Covent Garden, Apr. 26, 1784, Epicoene quitted the 
stage, and was not seen for over a century. 

Coleridge left his opinion that 'this is to my feelings 
the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than 
any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if 
under the management of a judicious and stage-under- 
standing playwright ; and an actor who had studied 
Morose might make his fortune ' ^. But neither stage- 
manager nor actor has arisen to claim the fortune Coleridge 
promises, and to prove the critic's judgment a correct 
one. In 1895^ on Feb. 7, an enterprising class at the 
American Academy of Dramatic Arts produced the play 
as adapted for them by Mrs. Richardson. It was repro- 
duced at Harvard College a month later, when faculty and 
students co-operated to make it a memorable dramatic 
performance ^. The Sanders Theatre at Cambridge, Mass., 
was transformed into an Elizabethan playhouse, modeled 
on Joseph Dewitt's drawing of the Swan Theatre, 1596, 
and in accordance with the orders of Philip Henslowe in 
building the Fortune in 1600. The parts were all acted 
by men. A typical Elizabethan audience impersonated by 
students, together with appreciative, vigorous acting of the 
comedy, in the fitting environment of the Elizabethan 
stage, made this last recorded appearance of Epicoene an 
artistic success of the highest order. 

^ Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, 1,2. 
^ Coleridge, N'otes on Benjonson (Bohn), p. 533. 

^ G. P. Baker, Revival of Epicoene at Harvard College, Hai-v. Grad. Mag. 
3- 493- 



Literary Relationships xxvii 



C. Literary Relationships. 

Of all Jonson's copiedies there is none, except it be 
Bartholomew Fair, in which the reader breathes an atmo- 
sphere so familiarly English as in Epiccene. Yet an ex- 
amination of the play shows it to be largely foreign in its 
elements, a closely-woven tissue of un-English allusions. 
In writing it Jonson made use of Libanius and Ovid, as 
frankly as he used Tacitus and Suetonius when writing 
Sejanus ; but in each case he used the material differently. 
In the first he modified and modernized narrative and 
expository material into a realistic English comedy ; in the 
second he chose an historical event, set it forth in causal 
relations, deepened the individuality of the characters, and 
brought their actions within the limits of a classic Roman 
tragedy. His comprehension of the spirit of a past age 
is complete. His power to adapt the product of that age 
to the spirit of his own time is masterly. Only profound 
scholarship could produce such works of art, the scholarship 
of a man who ' held the prose writers and poets of antiquity 
in solution in his spacious memory. He did not need to 
dovetail or weld his borrowings with one another, but 
rather, having fused them in his own mind, poured them 
plastically forth into the mould of thought ^' 

The borrowings thus fused in Epiccene are from a dozen 
sources, chiefly classical ; but they may be grouped under 
four heads, according to the use to which they are put. 
First, there are the sources of plot or situation ; secondly, 
those of character ; thirdly, those of ideas or arguments 
incorporated into the dialogue ; and fourthly, there is the 
song in the first scene, translated from an imitator of 
Catullus. To the plot, an oration of Libanius, the Casina 
of Plautus, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night make the 

' Symonds, Ben Jonson, p. 52. Cf. Lowell, Fable for Critics. 



xxviii Introduction 

most important contributions. Of the characters, Morose 
is taken bodily from Libanius, and Cutbeard and the 
* ladies-collegiates ' are suggested by the same source. 
Into the dialogue is introduced almost a whole satire of 
Juvenal, much of Ovid's Ars Amatoria, speeches from 
Libanius, and sentences from Virgil, Terence, Cicero, and 
other classic writers. 

I. Sources of the Plot. 

Libanius^. For the central plot of Epiccene, in which 
a nervous misanthrope marries a woman reputed to be 
abnormally quiet-tongued, and discovers her to be a ter- 
magant, Jonson is indebted to the rhetorician Libanius, 
the publication of whose exercises, letters, and orations is 
frequent from early in the sixteenth century. Just before 
Epiccene was written, a folio edition of Libanius came out 
at Paris, with a Latin translation printed in columns 
parallel with the original Greek text ^. We mention this 
book because it was in all probability the edition used by 
Jonson, as a Latin version is most distinctly reflected in 
the language of the play, and in the name of the central 
character. Jonson calls his hero Morose (Lat. Morosus) 
instead of the Greek At;o-/coAos. 

DECLAMATIO SEXTA, pp. 300-14, Morofns qui 
vxorem loquaceni duxerat, feipfum accufat, is a speech sup- 
posed to be made by Morose before the city fathers. The 
speaker describes himself as a man of quiet habits and a 
hater of noise, whose life, once so calm and happy, is now 
utterly wrecked. He has come before the judges to tell his 
story, and gain permission to drink hemlock and die. The 
cause of his misery is a woman, his wife. A matchmaking 

^ Bom at Antioch, 314 a.d. Taught at Constantinople till expelled, 346. 
Died at Antioch, 391 a.d. 

2 AIBANI0YI20*I2T0Y nPO- 1 TTMNASMATA KAI MEAETAI | LIBANII 
SOPHISTS I PRAELVDIA ORATORIA LXXII. | DECLAMATIONES 
XLV. ET I DISSERTATIONES MORALES. | FEDERICVS MORELLVS 
REGIVS INTERPRES I PARISIIS. M. DC VI. 



Literary Relationships xxix 

friend had recently persuaded him to marry, and he had 
taken to wife a woman of noble birth, highly recommended 
for her power to be silent. Contrary to representation, she 
has proved to be an insufferable talker. Her friends invaded 
his house in a noisy crowd immediately after the ceremony. 
Worse than all, she had questioned him so unceasingly at 
night that he could get no sleep. When he tried to thunder 
down her noise by repeating a line of ancient poesy, ' Est 
foeminis ornatui silentium ', his wife asked him who was 
the poet, the poet's father, his race, his education, and other 
unnecessary questions. Already he has resorted to the 
defrauding matchmaker, but received no comfort. Sick at 
heart, he now desires to die, wishing no one to weep for 
him after the poison has done its work. He only prays 
that the wife may live long on earth in order that he may 
find an interim of peace in the under-world : 

O dii deaeque omnes, si qnis defunctis sermonis usns est, date huic 
mulieri ut ad summam senectutem perveniat, quo maiore fniar apud Diteni 
quiete. 

In making use of this narrative in monologue, Jonson 
has chosen certain elements of the plot and added to them. 
He selects Morose's wedding-morning as the time of the 
drama's action ; he gives as a reason for Morose's hasty 
marriage his anger toward the nephew Dauphine ; he sub- 
stitutes for the Greek matchmaker the English barber, 
Cutbeard, to whom Morose entrusts the choosing of a wife ; 
he develops the suggestion of the boisterous wedding-guests 
into the subplot, whose characters are the crowd of ' ladies- 
collegiates ' and courtiers, with their ' minions and followers' ; 
he releases the unhappy bridegroom, not by poison, but 
by changing Epicoene into a boy just before the fall of the 
curtain. Comic as is the plot of the Greek story, it grows 
marvelously in the imagination of the dramatist, and 
develops unforeseen possibilities and complexities. In 
many details of incident and language, as well as in plot, 
likenesses may be pointed out between the oration and 



XXX Introduction 

the comedy, and without exception Jonson cleverly adapts 
his material to modern conditions. 

Jonson's debt to Libanius was first recorded by Theobald. 
Gifford worked along the line of the suggestion, quoting 
passages in his notes from the Greek text. I have chosen, 
for obvious reasons, to use the Latin text in setting forth 
here the principal similarities. The examples will be cited 
in the order of their occurrence in the old Libanius story. 

Very early in his speech to the judges Morose explains 
what his father's instructions had been in regard to a quiet 
life (p. 301}: 

Atenim pater meus, Senatores, hortabatur me, ut mentem semper colli- 
gerem et cotinerem, neve sinerem earn diffluere ; ut perspicerem ea qnae ad 
vitam degendam necessaria essent, quaeque non ; atque ilia quidem ample- 
cterer, ab aliis vero abstinere; ut denique quietem colerem, turbas fugerem. 
Quae etiamnum, viri Consules, facere non desino : neque conciones fre- 
quenter adeo, non eo quod ea quae Reip. conducunt negligam ; sed ob 
clamores oratorum, qui tacere nequeunt. 

So the English Morose explains to his legal advisers, 
in Act 5, the reason he seeks a divorce : ' My father, in my 
education, was wont to aduise mee, that I should alwayes 
collect and contayne my mind, not suffering it to flow 
loosely,' &c. (5. 3. 48 ff.). 

Pursuing his argument, the Greek Morose states why 
he so infrequently associates with those of the legal pro- 
fession : 

Nee fomm valde frequeto, propter istaec multa litium nomina, delatio, 
accusatio, abductio, actio, prescriptio. Quae illi etiam quib. negotiu 
nullum est, libenter in ore habet. 

This Jonson adapts delightfully in a speech. Act 4. 7. 14, 
where Morose complains of the noise in the court : ' Such 
speaking, and counter-speaking, with their seuerall voyces 
of citations, appellations, allegations, certificates, attach- 
ments, intergatories, references, conuictions, and afflictions.' 
In the original the afflicted man enumerates to the 
listening 'senatores' certain varieties of noise that are 
particularly distasteful to him, repeating what he had said 



Literary Relationships xxxi 

to the base friend who persuaded him to matrimony 
(p. 303) : 

Tantum vero die mihi, quali haec virgo lingua sit. nosti enim, amice, 
mores meos, quod nee stertente hominem ferre possim, nee singultientem, 
neque excreante, neq; tussi laborantem. quia plagas aceipere mnlto 
malle, qnam istaee tolerare. Garrulu autem ne in somnis quidem 
paterer. quod si m^ degere cum tali coniuge oporteret, qui putas me 
vivere posse ? 

So in 4. 4. 139 fif. the exasperated bridegroom is assured 
by the weeping bride's friends that she both snores and 
talks in her sleep. The torture of coughing he is made to 
endure, not by hearsay, but at first hand, 3. 4. 14 fif., 
where the minister who performs the wedding-ceremony 
suffers with a cold. 

When, in 5. 3. 25, the English Morose refuses to salute 
his counsel, exclaiming : ' I wonder, how these common 
formes, as god saue you, and you are well-come, are come 
to be a habit of our Hues ! or, / am glad to see you ! when 
I cannot see what the profit can bee of these wordes . . . ,' 
he is following closely his Greek prototype (p. 302) : 

Quinetiam eomunis ilia salutandi formula foro exulare deberet, quae 
nescio unde in vitae consnetudinem venerit, gaudere et saluere. neq; enim 
per Deos video quae sit horum verboru utilitas ; quando quidem non prae- 
clarius cu illo agitur, cui res sunt molestae et tristes, quod earn saluta- 
tionem atidiat. 

One of the most distinctively English pictures xnEpiccene 
is that of the London streets in the first scene of the play, 
where True-wit and Clerimont enumerate the familiar out- 
door occupations and pastimes which Morose refuses to 
have carried on in or around his house. No coach or cart 
will he allow in his street, no coster shouting his wares, 
no brasier tinkering with pots, no bear-ward advertising the 
sports of the Garden, i. i. 150 fif. Some of these are 
named as the destroyers of the peace of Libanius' Morose : 

Porro illorum offieinas imprimis fugio, quae ineudem, malleos et strepitus 
habent : ut puta monetariorum, aerarioru fabrorum, aliorumque eiusmodi, 
Eas autem artes ampleiftor, quae silentio fiunt. 

'Shee has brought a wealthy dowrie in her silence, Cvtberd,' 
the English Morose confides to his barber, congratulating 



xxxii Introduction 

himself on his good fortune, 2. 5. 90, and echoing the old 
folio (p. 303) : 
Quidni vero paruissem, cum de silentio, dote mirifica, verba fieri audissem ? 

The behavior of the wedding-guests, which is described 
as anything but orderly and sedate in the comedy, 4. i. 2, 
is suggested (p. 303) : 

Neque enim ilia fuerant tolerabilia, plausns mnltus, risus vehemes, 
saltatio indecora, hymenaeus mente cares : omnia undequaque, quando 
Furiam illam duxi, confluxerunt, more torrentum, qui corruentes in se 
invicem ingentes edunt strepitus. 

Still on the same page the Greek Morose tells what 
anguish was his when the unwelcome wedding-guests 
were introduced to him with details of name, birth, 
parentage, &c. : 

Na cum ancillas ad se venire iussisset, discere nome cuiusque, paretum- 
que ; ipsaru et natorum, voluit coram me, et quot quaeque liberos 
habuisset, et quot obiisset. 

So Jonson's Morose, 3. 6. 13, hears Jack Daw announce 
name after name of the unexpected and uninvited guests, and 
finally appeals to True-wit with, ' What nomenclator is this ? ' 

When Morose is driven to the verge of madness by the 
unnecessary queries of Epiccene, 4. 4. ^$, he appeals to 
True-wit : *0 horrible, monstrous, impertinancies ! would not 
one of these haue seru'd ? ' And True-wit replies : ' Yes, sir, 
but these are but notes of female kindnesse, sir : certaine 
tokens that shea has a voice, sir ' — taking his cue from the 
Greek matchmaker who had answered the complaints of 
the original Morose thus : 

Certe, inquit ilia, amicitiae signu istud est, et simul est iudiciu vocis. 
tu vero nimis rusticus es : atqui no sic oportnit affectum esse. 

In this Sc. 4. 4 True-wit promises to quiet the bride, but 
Morose dissuades him, saying, 4. 4. 77 : ' Labour not to 
stop her. Shee is like a conduit-pipe, that will gush out 
with more force, when she opens againe.' The corresponding 
words of the Greek Morose are : ' Flumina prius certe starent 
quam istius os' (p. 306). In changing the general word 
' river ' for the English concrete concept of ' conduit ', Jonson 



Literary Relationships xxxiii 

gives his hearers a local London picture. In this same 
scene of the comedy Morose, inspired with an idea which 
may silence his irrepressible bride, 4. 4. 136, suggests : 
' I should doe well inough, if you could sleepe. Haue 
I no friend that will make her drunke ? or giue her a little 
ladanum ? or opium ? * Compare Libanius, p, 308 : 

At si ebria foret, dormiret; quod si dormiret, fortasse taceret, Istaec 
omnia incommoda minora sunt eo quod praesens est : omnia sunt leviora 
loquacitate. 

There is little more than a hint in Libanius, p. 307, of 
the highly comic scene in which the bridegroom found 
himself overwhelmed with the flood of wedding-guests : 

Garrulitate undique obrutus sum. Ut mare navigium, sic me fluctus 
muliebris immersit et absorbuit. 

Scene 3. 6 evolved from it, is one of the liveliest in the play. 
A last illustration of parallel passages is the speech of 
Morose, ^. 4. 157, in which, despairing of any escape from 
noise except by death, he implores to be granted ' the 
pleasure of dying in silence, nephew ! ' Words like these 
the Greek Morose addressed to his judges : 

Hac mihi gratia Senatores, concedite, danate me quam primum perfecta 
quiete: efficite ut numeru beatorum, fato functorQ, sensuq; cassorS 
augeam . . . verum unu hoc etiam accedat velim, ut qui cicutam mihi 
porriget, silentium servet (pp. 312, 313). 

It seems very likely that the sixth declamation of Libanius 
appealed to Jonson's sense of the comic before he began to 
write Epiccene. In Volpone, the comedy immediately pre- 
ceding it, there is a scene which is reminiscent of the sophist's 
story. In Act 3, Sc. a, Lady Politick Would-be torments 
Volpone, much as Epiccene torments Morose, with a tongue 
that will not be silenced. On p. 234, Volpone says : 

The poet 
As old in time as Plato, and as knowing, 
Says, that your highest female grace is silence. 

This was suggested doubtless from the Greek Morose's 
argument (p. 310), ' Est foeminis ornatui silentium ' ^. 

^ Cf. infra, p. xxix. 
C 



xxxiv Introduction 

Plautus. Plautus has given one important contribution 
to the plot of Epiccene, the bringing about of the denoue- 
ment by revealing the sex of the supposed bride. Dauphine 
extracts from his despairing uncle money and a deed of gift, 
in exchange for a promise to annul the eldei^'s marriage. 
He does so by proving the bride to be a boy in disguise. 
As Koppel, Rapp, and Reinhardstottner ^ point out, this 
sort of mock wedding, followed by a ludicrous undisguising, 
is found in the Casina of Plautus. In the Latin comedy the 
enamoured old Stalino is fooled by his wife Cleostrata and 
her accomplice into believing the young Chalinus is the 
maiden Casina. The supposed maiden is wedded to 
Olympic, the bailiff. When Stalino and the quondam 
husband go to meet her at the house of Alcesimus, they 
find Chalinus in the garments of Casina, are both beaten 
by him, and made the butts of boisterous laughter. 

Upton pointed out three other places in Epiccene, one in 
which the language, the others in which the language and 
action, may be traced to Plautus. The first is unimportant, 
and occurs i. 4. 153, where True- wit says of Daw: 'No 
mushrome was euer so fresh. A fellow so vtterly nothing, 
as he knowes not what he would be.' The lines are related 
to Plautus, Bacch. 4. 7. 23 ' Nee sentit ; tanti'st, quanti 
est fungus putidus ' ^ The second reference is 2. 5. 88 ; 
when Cutbeard would moderate the excessive joy expressed 
by Morose at the discovery of a woman who knew how to 
be silent, the latter refuses to listen, cutting him off with — 
' I know what thou woulst say, shee 's poore, and her friends 
deceased ; shee has brought a wealthy dowrie in her silence, 
Cutberd ; and in respect of her pouerty, Cutberd, I shall 
haue her more louing, and obedient, Cutberd.' We have 
already noticed that the dowry of silence is mentioned by 

^ Emil Koppel, Quellen-Studien . . . Leipzig, 1895 ; T. Macci Plauti 
Casina, Kec. Fr. Schoell, Leipzig, 1890; M. Rapp, Studien iiber das englische 
Theater, p. 228; Reinhardstottner, Plautus, p. 390. 

* Cf. note, 2, 4. 153. 



Literary Relationships xxxv 

Libanius {stipra, p. xxxii), who, perhaps, as well as Jonson, 

had read the same sentiment in the Aulularia of Plautus, 

2. I. 50. Here, as does Cutbeard, Eunomia shakes her 

head, or endeavours to speak, and Megadorus, anxious to 

persuade her to his way of thinking, argues : 

Eius cupio filiam 
Virginem mihi desponderi — Verba ne facias, soror : 
Scio quid dictura es, banc esse pauperem. Haec pauper placet. 

The third allusion to Plautus is 4. 4. ^^, in the de- 
scription Epiccene gives of the pretended madness of her 
husband. ' How his eyes sparkle ! He lookes greene about 
the temples ! Doe you see what blue spots he has ? ' Cf. 
Plautus, Menaechmi^. 1. 76 : 

MUL. Viden' tu illi oculos virere ? ut viridis exoritur color 
Ex temporibus atque fronte, ut oculi scintillant, vide ! 

Shakespeare. The third source of Jonson's plot, and the 
only incident traceable to an English source, is the gulling 
of Daw and La-Foole by True-wit in Act 4. 5. Steevens 
was the first to compare this scene with Twelfth Night 3. 4, 
and to declare Shakespeare the borrower. Gifford said of 
the matter^: ' There can be no doubt but that the attempt 
of sir Toby and Fabian to bring on a quarrel between 
Aguecheek and Viola, is imitated from this scene.' That 
it was Jonson who was the borrower the dates of the plays 
easily prove. 

The date of Twelfth Night was long conjectural, and 
assigned to every year from 1599 to 1614. It was finally 
settled by the discovery in the British Museum in 1828 of 
a little manuscript, the diary of John Manningham^, a 
student of the Middle Temple. There are entries in the 
diary from 1601 to 1603. On Feb. 3, i6oi, Manningham 
writes : 

At our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night or what you will, much 
like the comedy of errors, or Menechmis in Plautus, but most like and 
neere to that Italian called Inganni. A good practise in it to make the 
steward believe his lady widdowe was in love with him, by counterfayting 

^ Jonson's Works 3. 436. 2 Camden Society Reprints. 

C % 



xxxvi Introduction 

a letter, as from his lady, in general termes telling him what shee liked best 
in him, and prescribing his gestures, inscribing his apparaile etc. and then 
when he came to practise, making believe they took him to be mad. 

Epiccene, then, is almost a decade later than Twelfth 
Night. 

In comparing Jonson's scene and the one from which it 
is imitated, it is evident at the outset that the former 
differs from the latter as an incident in a London comedy 
of manners and intrigue would differ from that in a comedy 
of romance. What is an intrinsic part of the plot in 
Twelfth Night becomes almost episodic in Epiccene, with 
a different motive for its introduction. Sir Toby, by any 
means he can devise, is keeping Sir Andrew Aguecheek 
at his niece Olivia's house, ostensibly to court the scornful 
countess, but really to strip Sir Andrew of his possessions. 
He explains, to Fabian, ' I have been to him, lad, some 
two thousand strong or so ' (3. 3. ^'^). The idea that the 
disconsolate Sir Andrew should send a challenge to his 
rival, the disguised Viola, pops into Sir Toby's head as 
another means to extract something more from the gull, 
for he knows ' oxen and wainropes cannot hale them 
together' (3. 2. 6'^). So when Andrew promises to give 
him his horse if he call off the fight, he promptly sets 
about to do it. In Epiccene the motive is punishment of 
two fellows who have slandered Dauphine ' before the 
ladies'. Without the formality of a challenge each is 
made to believe that the other is ready to annihilate him 
for some injury. In great fear each petitions for a me- 
diator, and unwittingly picks out the main conspirator ; 
each is then punished by the wronged Dauphine, who 
disguises himself as Daw when he tweaks the nose of 
Amorous, and disguises himself as Amorous when he 
chastises Daw. As a result the humor in the two situa- 
tions is unlike. Sir Toby, the cozener, is himself some- 
thing of a victim, for the audience, but not the old renegade, 
see that the countess's frightened page is a woman. In 



Literary Relationships xxxvii 

Epiccene True-wit takes into his conspiracy not only 
Dauphine, but Clerimont, the spectators, and finally the 
stage audience of ' collegiates ', and makes his day's mirth 
* a iest to posterity '. The humor is far more genial which 
makes Sir Toby less of a victimizer than he believes him- 
self to be, and justly divides the laughter between him and 
his cowardly victims. The same genial humor awakens a 
sympathy for Viola, in her unwilling participation in a fight 
into which she is undeservedly drawn, a sympathy not felt at 
the belaboring of Daw and the nose-tweaking of La-Foole. 
The similarity between the scenes consists primarily in 
the setting on of two cowards to fight, but secondarily in 
details of description and expression. The note of sur- 
prise which Sir Toby strikes as he advises Viola to beware 
of her enemy, when she has never dreamed of the existence 
of one, True-wit admirably echoes in announcing to La- 
Foole Daw's mortal defiance. In Twelfth Night 3. 4. 
238 ff., the challenge is thus delivered : 

Sir To. Gentleman, God save thee. 

Vio. And you, sir. 

Sir To. That defence thou hast, betake thee to 't : of what nature the 
wrongs are thou hast done him, I know not ; but thy intercepter, full of 
despite, bloody as the hunter, attends thee at the orchard-end: dismount 
thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful and 
deadly. 

Vio. You mistake, sir ; I am sure no man hath any quarrel to me : my 
remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence done to 
any man. 

Sir To. You'll find it otherwise, I assure you : therefore, if you hold 
your life at any price, betake you to your guard ; for your opposite hath in 
him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath can furnish man withal. 

Vio. I pray you, sir, what is he? 

Sir To. He is knight, dubbed with unhatched rapier and on carpet con- 
sideration ; but he is a devil in private brawl : souls and bodies hath he 
divorced three ; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that 
satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, 
is his word ; give 't or take 't. 

Vio. I will return again into the house and desire some conduct of the 
lady. I am no fighter . . . 

Sir To. Sir, no ; his indignation derives itself out of a very competent 
injury : therefore get you on and give him his desire . . . 



xxxviii Introduction 

Vio. This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech yon, do me this courteous 
office, as to know of the knight what my offence to him is : it is something 
of my negligence, nothing of my purpose. 

At this point Sir Toby departs, pretending that he will, 
if possible, appease Sir Andrew, and leaves the frightened 
Viola in the care of Fabian. With Sir Toby's encounter 
compare that of True-wit and La-Foole, which begins, 
4. 5- '^SS, thus : 

Trv^ Enter here, if you loue your life. 

La-F. Why! why! 

Trv. Question till your throat bee cut, doe : dally till the enraged soule 
find you. 

La-F. Who's that? 

Trv. Daw it is ; will you in ? 

La-F. I, I, I'll in : what 's the matter ? 

Trv. Nay, if hee had beene coole inough to tell vs that, there had beene 
some hope to attone you, but he seemes so implacably enrag'd. 

La-F. 'Slight, let him rage. I'll hide my selfe. 

Trv. Doe, good sir. But what haue you done to him within, that 
should prouoke him thus ? you haue broke some iest vpon him, afore the 
ladies 

La-F. Not I, neuer in my life, broke iest vpon any man . . . 

Trv. . . . but hee walkes the round vp and downe, through euery roome 
o' the house, with a towell in his hand, crying, where 's La-Foole ? who 
saw La-Foole ? 

To Sir Toby's description of Sir Andrew above there 
are some likenesses in True-wit's description of La-Foole 
to Daw, 4. 5. 76 ff., where he maintains ' Bloud he thirsts for, 
and bloud he will haue : and where-abouts on you he will 
haue it, who knows, but himself?' This resembles Sir 
Toby's assurance of the necessity of ' the pang of death 
and sepulchre '. 

There is a reminiscence of Viola's suggestion that she 
return to the house for protection in La-Foole's proposal, 
4.5.184: 

I'll stay here, till his anger be blowne ouer . . . Or, I'll away into the 
country presently . . . Sir, I'll giue him any satisfaction. I dare giue any 
termes. 

Turning back to the scene in Twelfth Night, we find 



Literary Relationships xxxix 

that on Sir Toby's departure to seek out Sir Andrew, 
Viola asks Fabian : 

I beseech you, what manner of man is he ? 

Fab. Nothing of that wonderful promise to read him by his form, as you 
are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is, indeed, sir, the most 
skilful, bloody and fatal opposite that you could possibly have found in any 
part of Illyria. Will you walk toward him ? I will make your peace with 
him if I can. 

Vio. I shall be much bound to you for 't : I am one that had rather go 
with sir priest than sir knight : I care not who knows so much of my mettle. 

Viola's frankness about her cowardice is a trait which 
both Daw and La-Foole possess. Her anxiety to have 
a mediator not only in Sir Toby, but in Fabian, is also 
found in Jonson's gulls. 

In the Twelfth Night scene, on the entrance of Sir Toby 
and the unwilling challenger of the fight, the former 
terrifies Sir Andrew with : 

Why, man, he 's a very devil ; I have not seen such a firago. I had 
a pass with him, rapier, scabbard and all, and he gives me the stuck-in 
with such a mortal motion, that it is inevitable; and on the answer, he 
pays you as surely as your feet hit the ground they step on. They say he 
has been fencer to the Sophy. 

With this picture of Viola as an invincible wielder of the 
rapier, we may compare the portrait of La-Foole, 4. 5. 107 : 

Hee has got some-bodies old two-hand-sword, to mow you off at the 
knees. And that sword hath spawn'd such a dagger ! . . . There was neuer 
fencer challeng'd at so many seuerall foiles. 

After Sir Toby's description of Viola given above, Sir 
Andrew's courage all oozes away : 

Pox on't, I'll not meddle with him. 

Sir To. Ay, but he will not now be pacified : Fabian can scarce hold 
him yonder. 

Sir And. Plague on't, an I thought he had been valiant, and so cunning 
in fence, I 'Id have seen him damned ere I 'Id have challenged him. Let 
him let the matter slip, and I'll give him my horse, grey Capulet. 

Sir To. I'll make the motion : stand here, make a good show on't : 
this shall end without the perdition of souls. {Aside.) Marry, I'll ride your 
horse as well as I ride you. 

Re-enter Fabian and Viola. 
{To Fabian^ I have his horse to take up the quarrel: I have persuaded 
him the youth 's a devil. 



xl Introduction 

Fab. He is as horribly conceited of him ; and pants and looks pale, as if 
a bear were at his heels. 

Sir To. (7<? Vio.^ There's no remedy, sir; he will fight with you for's 
oath sake : marry, he hath better bethought him of his quarrel, and he finds 
that now scarce to be worth talking of: therefore draw, for the supportance 
of his vow ; he protests he will not hurt you. 

Vio. {Aside.) Pray God defend me ! A little thing would make me tell 
them how much I lack of a man. 

Fab. Give ground, if you see him furious. 

Sir To. Come, Sir Andrew, there 's no remedy ; the gentleman will for 
his honour's sake, have one bout with you ; he cannot by the duello avoid it : 
but he has promised me, as he is a gentleman and a soldier, he will not 
hurt you. Come on ; to 't. 

Sir And. Pray God, he keep his oath. 

The impending strife is broken off by the entrance of 
Antonio. 

The outcome of the incident in Epiccene is not a final 
facing of the two cowards as in Twelfth Night, but 
a summary punishment, as we have said. Of the characters, 
the arch-plotter True-wit takes the place of Sir Toby ; 
Clerimont and Dauphine jointly do the work of Fabian, 
although Dauphine takes a more important place as inflicter 
of punishment ; the action of Daw and La-Foole is 
modeled on that of Viola and Sir Andrew, but the characters 
are in no sense imitated from them ; the part of audience 
given to the ' collegiates ' by Jonson has no counterpart in 
the earlier play. The increase in the number of characters, 
the lengthening of descriptions, and the introduction of new 
comic incidents makes Jonson's scene longer, more gro- 
tesque, and more complex than its original. All in all, though 
the laughter which greets the discomfiture of Daw and 
La-Foole is unmitigatedly derisive, the episode is perhaps 
the most innocently and enduringly funny in the comedy. 

We cannot close the discussion of plot-sources without 
calling attention to one feature which has no exact 
precedent. I refer to the charge of infidelity against the 
bride being disproved by revealing the sex of the accused. 
The masquerading of women as men is very common in the 
drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Proof of innocence 



Literary Relationships xH 

by revealing that one of the accused parties is a woman 
disguised as a man, is as old as the legend of St. Eugenia, 
who disguised herself as a monk in Egypt, and was martyred 
under Valerian about 329 A. D. The same sort of proof 
occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, where the 
accusation against Aresthusa, involving the page Bellario, 
is nullified by proving the page to be Dion's daughter. 

The masquerading of men as women is not a common 
dramatic device, though Falstafif dons a woman's gown in 
the Merry Wives of Windsor 4. 2. That it is a classic 
situation is already pointed out in the case of Chalinus in 
Casina. Both these are instances of farcical treatment. 
I find, however, no case in which innocency is established 
by undisguising a man who is masquerading as a woman. 

This part of the plot is not of vital importance to the 
movement, for the accusation made in Act 5. i and 
disproved in Sc. 5. 4 is introduced to add one more affliction 
to Morose, and to disgrace the knights another time, not to 
rouse sympathy for Epiccene as the distressed heroine. 

2. Sources of the DialogJie. 

It is significant of Jonson's point of view and purpose 
in Epiccene to find the two principal sources of the dia- 
logue the A rs A materia of Ovid and the Sixth Satire of 
Juvenal. As weapons to strike at the characteristic follies 
of Jacobean women in general, and at certain organiza- 
tions of London women in particular, Jonson chose the 
expository Latin treatise which reduces love and love- 
making to an art, and the Latin satiric poem which is the 
bitterest invective ever written against womankind. Wher- 
ever Jonson uses this material, and with whatever comic 
effect, its satiric interest cleaves to it. 

A strange metamorphosis Ovid's Ars Amatoria under- 
goes to become a vehicle for satire — a use unprecedented in 
its long history ! Ovid had divided with Virgil the venera- 
tion of the Middle Ages and Jonson's own late Renaissance 



xlii Introduction 

period. He had been, and still was, imitated in Latin 
verse, and translated into all tongues. In the. Ars Amatoria 
Jonson found ready to his hand information and opinions 
concerning women, expressed with cleverness by a poet 
who knew whereof he spoke. In the use the English 
dramatist makes of the poetic dissertation, he shows up in 
a ridiculous light the anomalous production which the 
world had for centuries accepted as a high type of 
literature. 

Translations of the Ars Amatormhegin at an early date. 
Edward Lhuyd describes what is probably the earliest 
translation in England, a Saxon MS. of the tenth century, 
in the Bodleian, which contains a translation of the first 
book, with a Latin gloss ^. 

In the twelfth century we find Chretien de Troyes with 
his courtly grace putting into Old French this Latin poem. 
In the thirteenth century Dante in his earlier works quotes 
often from Ovid, and in l7iferno 4. 90 ranks him with 
Homer, Horace, and Lucan in Limbo. In the fourteenth 
Petrarch pronounces the Ars Amatoria the model of a 
didactic poem on the passion of love reduced to a system ; 
Gower blends the 'Art of Love ' with his breviary in 
Confessio Amantis ; Chaucer imitates him in the Hous of 
Fame ; and Berchorius, ' constituted grammatical preceptor 
to the novices of the Benedictine Congregation or Monastery 
at Clugni in the year 1340/ draws up a ' Notice of the 
Prosody, and a commentary of Ovid ^ '. In the fifteenth 
Gawain Douglas translates the Ars Amatoria into Scottish 
meter, a version which is now lost. In the sixteenth and 
seventeenth Ovid reached the high-water mark of his popu- 
larity in Europe, his translators grow legion, and his 
influence on poets is everywhere apparent. 

In France Clement Marot was his best translator. In 
England Tottel's Miscellany printed the first of Ovid done 

* Archceologia Britannica, p. 226. Oxford, 1709. 

* Warton, History of Eng. Poet. i. 300. 



Literary Relationships xliii 

into English verse ; George Tuberville did the Epistles in 
1567; Thomas Churchyard the first three books of Tristia 
in 1580 ; Arthur Golding the first four books of the Meta- 
morphoses in 1565, and the fifteen in 1575 5 Sandys translated 
them again in 1626. The Ibys had been put into English 
by Thomas Underdowne in 1569, and the Fasti before 
1570. It was in 1596 that Christopher Marlowe trans- 
lated the Amores or Elegies, which were ordered to be 
burnt by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1599, and in 
this latter year a translation of the Remedy of Love by 
T. L. appeared. A century later Congreve and Dryden 
were both to ' English ' the Ars Amatoria. 

Ovid's influence was paramount in Jonson's own day. 
Francis Meres said of Shakespeare, ' The sweet witty soul 
of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shake- 
speare^'; and we do find the Latin poet's influence 
in both the subject and treatment of the early poems. It 
is felt in the classic mythology of his dramas also, while 
ideas from the Ars Amatoria are found in the dialogue on 
women by Speed and Launce in the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona 3. 2. 320 ff. There is further information to be 
found on this dramatist's relation to the Latin elegies in 
an article in Eraser s Magazine, by Professor Baynes, 
1879-80, ' What Shakespeare learned at School,' in R. K. 
Root's Classical Mythology in Shakespeare, and in J. C. 
Collins's Studies in Shakespeare. 

Jonson himself makes Ovid the hero, if he may be so 
called, in the Poetaster, and in the Alchemist has Mammon 
promise Dol that he will make love out of Ovid — which 
is exactly what True-wit attempts to teach Dauphine to do 
in Epicoene. At this place we might point to a character 
somewhat resembling True-wit, Amoretto in the Pilgrim- 
age to Parjtassus, who is a pupil of Ovid in the field which 
is suggested by his name. 

1 Falladis Tamia, Arter's Garner 2. 97. 



xliv Introduction 

Of Ovid's influence in minor English verse, some lines 
of Tom Nash, quoted by Mr. Sidney Lee, are suggestive ^ : 

Thus hath my penne presum'd to please my friend. 

Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo's eye. 

No, Honor brookes no such impietie, 
Yet Ovid's wanton muse did not offend. 
He is the fountain whence my streames do flow. 

Mr. Barrett Wendell concludes a discussion of Ovid's 
influence in the time of which we are writing in these 
words ^ : 

At first it would seem as if the great popularity of Ovid were due half to 
his erotic license, and half to the fact that he wrote easy Latin. On further 
consideration, the question looks less simple. The liking of Renascent 
Europe for the later classics is very similar to the liking of our grandfathers 
for the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de' Medici, for Guido Reni and 
Carlo Dolci. Freshly awakened artistic perception is apt to prefer the 
graces of some past decadence to the simple, pure beauty of really great 
periods. 

So, not only in the literature of the great imaginative 
period of the English Renaissance, but in the art of the 
Italian Renaissance, apparently for much the same reasons, 
we find the influence of Ovid in subject-matter, point of 
view, and manner of treatment. 

Well, Jonson took material from Ovid's amatory treatise, 
with its pagan point of view and its impudent shameless- 
ness, and fused it with the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, no less 
pagan in view-point, but redeemed by its severely satiric 
purpose. Of the Sixth Satire one critic has said : 

If it is desirable that such a subject should be treated in the spirit in 
which Juvenal has treated it, it may be regarded as fortunate that it has 
been done once for all with such power, with such freedom from restraint 
imposed either by modesty or humanity, and with, apparently, such intimate 
knowledge, that no writer of later ages has attempted to rival it. 

And when Jonson dared to make use of such a satire, it 
was because he found in it material which suited exactly 
what he had to say, and the way he desired to say it : 
some of Juvenal's bitterness, Ovid's immodesty, and the 
inhumanity of both have been lent to Epicame, which does 

' A Life of William Shakespeare, p. 386. 

2 Barrett Wendell, William Shakespere, p. 53. 



Literary Relationships xlv 

not exhibit among the four women characters and the 
man masquerading as a woman a single redeeming femi- 
nine attribute. But in which of his greater comedies has 
Jonson ever created a woman actuated by virtuous motives, 
unless it be Celia in Volpone, who does not act at all, but is 
a victim of tragic circumstance? The wife of Francis 
Fitzdottrel in the Devil is an Ass is too inconsistent 
a person to stand as an exception. Though it may not be 
said of Jonson, as of Juvenal, that women hold ' the most 
cherished place in the poet's antipathies ', yet the qualities 
with which he endows his women, and his ungracious de- 
scription of his own wife, curtly quoted by Drummond as 
' a shrew yet honest ', show his usual attitude towards 
women to be supercilious and unsympathetic, and to be 
marked by an inherent love of detraction and exaggeration 
worthy the elder satirist. 

Two sources for satiric dialogue could not in the original 
be more diverse in spirit and purpose than the satire of 
Juvenal, in which the saeva indignatio is directed against 
women in general and marriage in particular, and the 
Ars Amatoria of Ovid, in which is taught the art corrum- 
pere et corrumpi. Yet Jonson has fused both stuffs in 
the same crucible, and they have come out undifferentiated 
material for comic satire. 

Ovid. On the Ars Amatoria are based Epiceeite i. i 
and 4. 1,3. In the first of these scenes the material quoted 
literally is interpreted satirically, and is levelled against the 
ridiculous vanity of women — especially their pride in ap- 
pearance, extravagance in dress, and lavish use of cosmetics. 
In 4. I True-wit instructs the bashful Dauphine how to 
court the ' ladies-collegiates ' in a truly Ovidian manner. 
In 4. 3 the ladies are inclined to thrust themselves con- 
spicuously into conversation, in which Daw, La-Foole, 
True-wit, and Clerimont are taking part ; so Jonson takes 
occasion to make them the subject of some of the most 
disparaging remarks in Ovid against the sex. 



xlvi Introduction 

In quoting from Ars Aniatoria it is necessary to follow 
the order in which the material is used in the comedy, 
for Jonson has culled his lines from wheresoever he 
pleased, adhering not at all to the order of the Latin text. 

In I. I. 1 04 True-wit begins a disquisition on womankind 
with a statement of the fact that there may be many sorts of 
beauty in a woman, as Ovid says Ars Aniatoria 3. 135 : 

Nee genus ornatus unum est ; quod quamque decebit, 

Eligat ; et speculum consulat ante suum. 
Longa probat fades capitis discrimina puri : 

Sic erat ornatis Laodomia comis. 
Exiguum summa nodum sibi fronte relinqui, 

Ut pateant aures, ora rotunda volunt. 

True-wit believes that it is in private that a woman should 
study her ' genus ornatus ', and the manner of improving it, 
in order to deserve admiration later. Some of the original 
lines are 3. 217 ff. : 

Ista dabunt faciem ; sed erunt defonnia visu : 

Multaque, dum fiunt tnrpia, facta placent . . . 
225 Tu quoque dum coleris, nos te dormire putemus; 

Aptius a summa conspiciere manu. 
Cur mihi nota tuo causa est candoris in ore? 

Claude forem thalami, quid rude prodis opus ? . . . 
231 Aurea quae pendent ornato signa theatro, 

Inspice, quam tenuis bractea ligna tegat ; 
Sed neque ad ilia licet populo, nisi facta, venire; 

Nee nisi submotis forma paranda viris. . . . 

Jonson's adaptation of 3. 231-2 is particularly worthy 
of note. Instead of 

Aurea quae pendent ornato signa theatro, 
Inspice, quam tenuis bractea ligna tegat ; 

he asks, i. i. 123, ' How long did the canuas hang afore 
Aldgate ? were the people suffer'd to see the cities Loue 
and Charitie, while they were rude stone?' True-wit's 
story, I. I. 130, of the lady with the 'reuerst face' comes 
from A. A. 3. 243 : 

Quae male crinita est, custodem in limine ponat, 

Orneturve Bonae semper in aede Deae : 
Dictns eram cuidam subito venisse puellae, 

Turbida perversas induit ilia comas. 



Literary Relationships xlvii 

Passing to Act 4, Sc. i, we find the whole of this scene 
taken from the first and third books of the Ars Amatoria. 
True-wit is again spokesman, 4. i. '3^^^ and enlarges on the 
fact that, ' An intelligent woman, if shee know by her selfe 
the least defect, will bee most curious, to hide it.' So 
Ovid, 3. 261 : 

Rara tamen mendo facies caret ; occule mendas, 

Quamque potes, vitium corporis abde tui. 
Si brevis es, sedeas, ne stans videare sedere, 

Inque tuo iaceas quantulacunque toro . . . 
271 Pes malus in nivea semper celetur aluta, 

Arida nee vinclis crura resolve suis. . . . 
275 Exiguo signet gestu quodcumque loquetur, 

Cui digiti pingues, et scaber unguis erunt. 
Cui gravis oris odor, nunquam ieiuna loquatur, 

Et semper spatio distet ab ore viri. 
Si niger, aut ingens, aut non erit ordine natus 

Dens tibi, ridendo maxima damna feres. 

True-wit objects to the loud laugh of some women, 4. 
I. 47. And to the ' estrich '-like gait of others, 4. i. 49. 
A. A. 3. 389 ff.: 

Ilia sonat raucum, quiddam inamabile stridet, 

Ut rudit ad scabram turpis asella molam. 
Est et in incessu pars non temnenda decoris : 

AUicit ignotos ille fugatque viros. 
Haec movet arte latus, tunicisque fluentibus auras 

Excipit ; extensos fertque refertque pedes. . . . 

True-wit's list of places where one might find women 
who had come thither out of curiosity, for display, or in 
search of adventure, includes 'court, tiltings, publique 
showes, feasts, playes, and church ' (4. i. 59 ff.) ; he finds 
the suggestion in the first book of the Ars Amatoria, which 
devotes some 263 lines to describing the places in which 
to look for Roman women — the temples of Isis and Venus, 
the forum; ox A. A. i. 89 : 

Sed tu praecipue cnrvis venare theatris; 

Haec loca sunt voto fertiliora tuo. 
Illic invenies quod ames, quod ludere possis, 

Quodque semel tangas, quodque tenere velis. 



xlviii Introduction 

Or better still, the games of the circus or arena, A. A. i. 97 : 

Sic ruit ad celebres cultissima foemina ludos, 

Copia iudicium saepe morata meum : 
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae ; 

Ille locus casti damna pudoris habet. 

He assures Dauphine, 4. i. 64, that 'a wench to please 
a man comes not downe dropping from the seeling, as he 
lyes on his backe droning a tobacco pipe '. Ovid's lines 
are, i. 4a : 

Elige cui dicas, Tu mihi sola places : 
Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras ; 

Quaerenda est oculis apta puella tuis. 
Scit bene venator, cervis ubi retia tendat. 

Some lines of the Latin poet's, i. 477, are adapted, 
4. T. 75 : 

Penelopen ipsam, persta mode, tempore vinces, 
Capta vides sero Pergama, capta tamen, . . . 

' Penelope her selfe cannot hold out long. Ostend, you 
saw, was taken at last.' Penelope, the universally recog- 
nized type of patient fidelity, Jonson repeats without 
change, but Pergamus, and its siege, forgotten or never 
known to his audience, he omits, and gives a touch of 
realism to his satiric scene by referring to the recent siege 
of Ostend. 

Despite Clerimont's endeavour to stem the tide of True- 
wit's classic arguments, 4. i. 85, the former pursues Ovid 
point by point from i. 673 ff. : 

Vim licet appelles, grata est vis ipsa puellis, 

Quod iuvat, invitae saepe dedisse volunt, 
Quaecumque est subita Veneris violata rapina, 

Gaudet, et improbitas muneris instar habet. 
At quae, cum cogi posset, non tacta recessit, 

Ut simulet vultu gaudia, tristis erit. 

When True- wit enumerates, 4. i. 98 ff., the varieties of 
taste that might exist in feminine minds regarding essential 
attributes to masculine charm, and when with pseudo- 
gravity he considers how such tastes should be met and 
gratified, he is following Ovid, i. ']^^ ff. But quotation to 



Literary Relationships xlix 

illustrate the manner of Jonson's adaptation and the comic 
force with which he imbues the dialogue, is necessarily of 
a length which the matter of neither poet merits. 

Finiturus eram — sed sunt diversa puellis 

Pectora ; mille animos excipe mille modis — 
Pectoribus mores, tot sunt, quot in orbe figurae ; 

Qui sapit, innumeris moribus aptus erit. 
Hi iaculo pisces, illi capiuntur ab hamis ; 

Hos cava contento retia fune trahunt : 
Nee tibi conveniat cunctos modus unus ad annos. 

Longius insidias cerva videbit anus. 
Si doctus videare rudi, petulansve pudenti ; 

Diffidet miserae protinus ilia sibi : 
Inde fit, ut, quae se timuit committere honesto, 

Vilis in amplexus inferioris eat. 

In the brisk dialogue of Act 4. 3 there are no speeches 
of as great length as is common in the two scenes con- 
sidered above. Daw's query, 4. 3. 34, * Is the Thames the 
lesse for the dyers water? 'and La-Foole's unsuitably clever 
retort, ' Or a torch, for lighting many torches ? ' is a close 
enough adherence to A. A. 3. 96 ff. : 

Quid vetet adposito lumen de lumine sumi, 

Quisve cavo vastas in mare servet aquas? 
Det tamen ulla viro mulier non expedit, inquis; 

Quid, nisi quam sumes, die mihi, perdis aquam? 

Haughty's speech just below is from A. A. 3. 69 ff. : 

Tempus erit, quo tu, quae nunc excludis amantes, 
Frigida deserta nocte iacebis anus. 

When Morose has exhausted the list of places which he 
thinks might bear some comparison to the noise which 
surrounds him, 4. 4. 23, he scouts all offers of comfort 
and insists that ' Strife and tumult are the dowrie that 
comes with a wife'. So Ovid said, A. A. 3. 155 'Hoc 
decet uxores : dos est uxoria lites.' 

In the very last scene of the play is a quotation from 
Ovid's poem, %. 631, and the tone in which it is given by 
True-wit indicates a difference in the spirit of its adaptation, 
5. 4. 340 ff. : 

d 



1 Introduction 

Parva qneror: fingunt quidam, quae vera negarent, 

Et nulli non se concubuisse ferunt. 
Corpora si nequeunt, quae possunt, nomina tractant, 

Famaque, non tacto corpore, crimen habet. 

Although the matter is not an important one, there is 
a resemblance between the opening speech of True-wit in 
the first scene of the comedy, which he begins with the 
words, ' I loue a good dressing, before any beautie o' the 
world', and the lines which open the fragmentary treatise 
De Medicamme Faciei : 

Culta placent, auro sublimia tecta linuntur, 
Nigra sub imposito marmore terra latet. 

Juvenal. The Sixth Satire of Juvenal is incorporated 
into Act 3, Sc. 2, which is spoken by True-wit, and would 
be a monologue but for a few helpless interjections of 
Morose, which are inadequate to stop the storm of words 
which the speaker employs ' thundring into him the incom- 
modities of a wife '. Despite the bitterness of the satire, 
this scene is inimitably comic in its situation and applica- 
tion. 

Early in Juvenal's satire comes the query, ' Uxorem, 
Postume, duels ? ' It is so True-wit commences his tirade, 
2. 2. 17: ' They say, you are to marry ? to marry ! do 
you marke, sir ? ' But, he continues, the friends have sent 
him to recommend suicide rather than such a step as 
matrimony, suicide by drowning in the Thames, by a vault 
from Bow steeple, or from St. Paul's, or by poison. Com- 
pare Satire 6. 30 : 

Ferre potes dominam salvis tot restibus ullam, 
Cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae, 
Et tibi vicinum se praebeat Aemilius pons ? 
Aut si de multis nullus placet exitus, illud , . . 

Jonson has used all the suggestions which follow, making 
the allusions English rather than Roman, as in the instance 
quoted of the bridge. True-wit's assertion, 2. 2. 36 ff., that 
even in King Etheldred's time it is only a mere possibility 
that chaste women could be found among the English, is 
from Sat. 6. 1-3 : 



and 53-4 : 



Literary Relationships 

Credo pudicitiam Satumo rege moratam 

In terris, visamque diu, quum frigida parvas 

Praeberet spelunca domos; 



Unus Hiberinae vir sufficit? ocius illud 
Extorquebis, ut haec oculo contenta sit uno. 



When True-wit recites the varying torments a husband is 
subject to, if his wife be young or old, rich or poor, and 
the rest, he follows Juvenal closely. His list of dangerous 
pleasure-makers, 2. 2. 61 ff., the vaulter, rope-walker, jig- 
dancer, and fencer, is suggested by Juvenal's 'comoedi, 
tragoedi, citharoedi, chorantes '. In 2. 2. 72 he gives the 
widow a thrust like Juvenal, 6. 140 : 

Libertas emitur: coram licet innuat atque 
Rescribat ; vidua est, locnples quae nupsit avaro. 

What follows about the disadvantages of a Puritanical 
wife is of course original in the English, but the succeeding 
point in regard to the trials of a man really in love with 
his wife, 2. 2. 92, reverts back to Sat. 6. 206 : 

Si tibi simplicitas uxoria, deditus uni 

Est animus, summitte caput cervice parata 

Ferre iugum. NuUam invenies, quae parcat amanti ; . . . 

Extravagance is one of the chief faults of a woman : she 
demands for servants, 2. 2. 108, 'groomes, footmen, vshers, 
and other messengers ' ; for her tradesmen, ' embroyderers. 
Jewellers, tyre-women, sempsters, fether-men, perfumers'. 
Juvenal has said, 6. 352 : 

Ut spectet ludos, conducit Ogulnia vestem, 
Conducit comites, sellam, cervical, arnicas, 
Nutricem et flavam, cui det mandata, puellam. 

Ten lines further on Juvenal warns Postumus that 'pro- 
diga non sentit pereuntem femina censum ', which True-wit 
ingeniously enlarges on, saying, 2. 2. iii, ' Shee feeles 
not how the land drops away ; nor the acres melt ; nor 
forsees the change, when the mercer has your woods for 
her veluets. . . .' Line 367 in the Latin is useful in 
explaining a barbarous expression into which Jonson is 

da 



lii Introduction 

betrayed, 2. 3. 115, where it is said of a page's smooth 
chin, that it ' has the despaire of a beard '. Juvenal says, 
' Oscula delectent et desperatio barbae '. To such a use 
may we put hne 468 'atque illo lacte fovetur Propter 
quod secum comites educit asellas,' which throws some 
h'ght on True-wit's obscure remark that the athletic wife 
* rises in asses' milk '. 

In more than one comedy Jonson ridicules the would-be 
learned woman, she who is ambitious to be called a ' states- 
woman'. In 2. a. 116 fif. True-wit warns Morose against 
such a one, who would want to know all the news from 
Salisbury, from the Bath, from Court ; censure all poets — 
Daniel, Spenser, and Jonson; argue theology, and even 
discuss mathematics. Juvenal renders a brief philippic 
against this species, 11. 434 ff. : 

Ilia etiam gravior, quae, cum discumbere coepit, 
Laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae, 
Committit vates et comparat, inde Maronem 
Atque alia parte in tnitina suspendit Homerum. 

And he adds, as a climax of impertinence, ' haec de 
comoedis te consulit, ilia tragoedum Commendare volet '. 

Nor is the Elizabethan vice of superstitious beliefs in 
prognostications of various kinds lacking. True-wit, a. 2. 
126 ff., derides the unwarranted faith in conjurers and 
cunning women ; Juvenal writes, Sal. 6. ^6^ : 

Consulit ictericae lento de funere matris, 
Ante tamen de te Tanaquil tua, quando sororem 
Efferat et patruos, an sit victurus adulter 
Post ipsam ? 

In fine, True-wit follows Juvenal in inveighing against 
what might be termed ' the physical-culture movement ' 
for women, then adds charges of artificiality, and generaliza- 
tions which deprive maid and matron of any iota of 
honesty or virtue, presents the stunned Morose with a 
halter, which he is to use if tempted to try the evils of 
matrimony, and departs, winding his horn in triumph. 
There is one touch in the Sixth Satire, a propos of the 



Literary Relationships liii 

hypercritical spirit of women in Jonson day, and the 
irritating effect of their exactions upon their husbands, 
which, it is to be regretted, Jonson overlooked. The most 
annoying thing in a wife, says Juvenal, 6. 455, if she 
possesses a little learning, is her eternal correction of her 
husband's language : ' Soloecismum liceat fecisse marito.' 
With this anti-climactic accusation against womankind, we 
pass to the remaining sources of the dialogue in Epiccene. 

Canon-law. Act 5- 3' "^^ which Morose consults with 
a divine and a canon-lawyer concerning the possibility 
of an annulment of his marriage, which had taken place 
so few hours before, is based on the fourteen impediments 
to marriage found in the old decretals. The language of 
the disputants follows naturally the explanations of the 
mediaeval textbooks on the subjects of marriage and its 
annulment. The verse of the canon quoted by Jonson on 
the impediments may be found in Thomas Aquinas, Smnma 
Theologiae ^. 

The remaining references in the dialogue are for the most 
part reminiscences of the dramatist's vast reading. Morose's 
assertion that silence is the only dowry a wife need bring 
(i. %. 26, 2. 5. 90) may be compared with Sophocles, Aj'ax 
393 yvvai, yvvai^l Koaixov rj atyr] 0epet, and Euripides, 
Heraclidae 41 ^~7 yvvatKi yap a-iyri re koX to a-axppovelv 
KakXicTTov, etati) 6' i](Tvyov p.iv€Lv h6p.oiv. The eulogy Morose 
pays to the silence in which oriental commands are given 
and obeyed (2. i. 29 fif.) finds its source, according to 
Whalley, in the writings of Augier Ghislen de Busbec, or 
Busbecque (Busbequius), a Flemish diplomatist and scholar 
of the sixteenth century, who wrote a popular volume 
on eastern life while ambassador at Constantinople for 
Ferdinand I. He says : 

Videbam summo ordine cuiusque corporis milites suis locis distributos, et 
(quod vix credat qui nostratis militiae consuetudinem novit) summum erat 
silentium, summa quies, rixa nulla, nullum cuiusquam insolens factum sed 
ne vox quidem aut vitulatio per lasciviam aut ebrietatem emissa. 

* Cf. infra, note, 5. 3. 209. 



liv Introduction 

In Morose's exclamation, 2.3.8, 'O men! O manners!' 
there is an echo of Cicero, In L. Catilinam Oratio I, 
' O tempora, O mores ! ' 

The pretence of Morose that he loves ceremonies and 
conventions, assuring his bride-to-be, 2. 5. 47, ' I must 
haue mine eares banqueted with pleasant and vs^ittie 
conference . . . ' is expressed, Upton points out, in the 
manner of Cicero. Cf. de Divhiatione i. 29. 61 'pars 
animi saturata bonarum cogitationum epulis ' ; and id. Top. 
4 fin. ' discendi epulas '. Cf. also, Plato, Titn. 27'' (p. 203) 
TeXeco? re koX XafJiTrpois ioLKa avTa-noXriylfecrOai rrjv t5)v k6y(x>v 
kariaa-iv : Rep. ID. 6l2 A, et al. 

To Virgil there are three references, all comically adapted. 
True-wit calls himself a ' night-crow ' uttering ' left-handed 
cries' (3. 5. 16). Cf Virgil, Eclogue 9. 15 'Ante sinistra 
cava monuisset ab ilice cornix ' ; Horace, Ode 3. 27. 15 
' Teque nee laevus vetet ire picas. Nee vaga cornix ' ; and 
Plautus, Asinaria 2. i. 12 ' Picus et cornix est ab laeva ; 
corvus porro ab dextera '. Gifford calls attention to 
the source of Haughty 's aphorism, 4. 3. 41, as Georgics 

Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi 
Prima fugit. 

The third use of Virgil's lines is made by True-wit, when he 
says with mock gravity to trembling John Daw, 4. 5. 58 : 
' I vnderstood . . . that you had held your life contemptible 
in regard to your honor.' Cf. Aeneid 9. 205, 206 : 

Est hie, est animus lucis contemptor, et istum 
Qui vita bene credat emi, quo tendis, honoremi 

When True-wit pretends to Daw, 4. 5. 166, that Amorous 
calls upon him to forfeit ' your vpper lip, and sixe o' your 
fore-teeth ', Whalley refers to a similar fanciful punishment 
administered in the old romance of Huon de Bourdeaux : 
' On ordonna au pauvre chevalier Huon de ne rentrer point 
en France, qu'il n'eust este lui arracher la barbe, et quatre 
dents maschelieres.' The light satiric thrust at the romances 
is repeated in substance, 4. i. ^'j. 



Literary Relationships Iv 

In 5. 3. 107 True-wit comforts Morose with a sympathetic 
ejaculation out of Terence, Heaut. 2. 3. 9, where Syrus 
exclaims, * Quanta de spe decidi ! ' 

Morose, in the climax of his despair at obtaining a release 
from his termagant wife, 5. 4. 150, parodies St. Chrysostom 
with ' This is worst of all worst worsts ' from '12 KaKov KaK&v 
KaKta-Tov, which should be, says Whalley, ' This is worst, of 
all worsts, worst '. 

3. Source of the lyric ^ Still to be neat\ 

In the opening scene of the comedy Clerimont's boy 
sings a lyric of two stanzas, modeled on the mediaeval 
Latin lyric. Simplex Mtmditiis, a poem ascribed by Gifford 
and others to Jean Bonnefons, a mediaeval imitator of 
Catullus, who lived at Clermont, Auvergne, and died some 
four years after the production of Epicoene. In Notes and 
Qtieries,g\h Scries 6, Sept. 29, 1900, Mr. Percy Simpson ques- 
tions the authorship, affirming that the lines are not in the 
edition of Bonnefons, 1592, or in Delitiae Poetarmn Gallorum, 
1609, The verses are thus left anonymous, although their 
first appearance is known to have been among certain 
poems appended to editions of the Satyricon of Petronius 
(e. g. 15^5, 1597). Mr. Simpson prints from Bonnefons's 
Pancharis verses in tone so much like that of Simplex 
Mtmdiiiis, that a confusion of the two poems is not 
surprising : 

Ad Fr. Myronerii Senatoreiti Parisienseni. 
Sit in deliciis puella, Myro, 
Quae Claris radiat superba gemmis, 
Quae monilibus atque margaritis 
Tota conspicua atque onusta tota est : 
Sit in deliciis amoiibusque 
Quae creta sibi, quaeque purpurisso 
Et veneficiis colorat ora. 

Placet, Myro, mihi puella simplex 
Cui nativa genas rubedo pingit, 
Nativusque pudor : placet puella 
Ore virgineo et decente cultu, 



Ivi Introduction 

Artis nescia negligensque fuci. 
Placet denique quae nihil monilis, 
Nil gemmae indiga, nilque margaritae, 
PoUet ipsa satis suapte forma. 

The verses which served Jonson as a model are as 
follows : 

Semper munditias, semper, Basilissa, decores, 

Semper compositas arte recente comas, 
Et comptos semper cultus, tinguentaque semper, 

Omnia soUicita compta videre manu, 
Non amo. Neglectim mihi se quae comit amica 

Se det ; et ornatus simplicitate valet. 
Vincula ne cures capitis discussa soluti, 

Nee ceram in faciem : mel habet ilia suum. 
Fingere se semper non est confidere amori ; 

Quid quod saepe decor, cum prohibetur, adest? 

Partly because of clever True-wit, and partly because of 
the roles of Otter and Cutbeard, who smatter Latin and 
easily evolve into a learned divine and a lawyer, Epiccene 
bristles with Latin expletives, ' old remnants ', proverbs, 
and occasionally a quotation. The former are too in- 
significant to collect ; but the direct citations are here 
enumerated. True-wit derogates Cutbeard to his master, 
5. 5. 37, by quoting Horace, Sat. i. 7. 3 'Omnibus et 
lippis notum et tonsoribus esse.' Otter noisily urges his 
companions to drink, 4. 2. 19, shouting: ' Et rauco stre- 
puerunt cornua cantu ', from the Aeneid 8. 2. Growing 
more and more bold he begs Sir Amorous to drink and 
fear no cousins, 4. 2. 43, for ' lacta est alea ', the old 
proverb connected with Caesar's name in Suetonius 1. 32. 
As Otter again passes round the cups, 4. 2. 69, he calls 
on the trumpeters to play, and increases their noise with 
his sonorous ' Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero ', from 
Horace, Ode i. 37. i. 

With this list of quotations we close our consideration of 
the sources to which Epiccene is indebted for plot and 
incident, for dialogue, song, and quotation. 



Literary Relationships Ivii 

4. Literary Descendants. 

It was inevitable that so popular a play as Epiccene 
should have imitators and echoers ; it is surprising that they 
are of so comparatively little importance, and so few. The 
comedy most closely modeled on Epica^ne is The City 
Match, by Jasper Mayne, played in 1639, and to be found 
in Hazlitt-Dodsley, Old Plays, vol. 13. Peter Plotwell, the 
Dauphine of the later comedy, to circumvent a miserly 
uncle, Warehouse, and keep him from marrying and dis- 
inheriting the nephew, plays upon him a trick. Instead 
of contriving a marriage, as did Dauphine, which was 
eventually invalidated by proving the supposed bride a 
boy, Plotwell arranges to marry Warehouse to a girl, 
Dorcas, whom he himself has just wedded, and to have 
the ceremony performed by a mock vicar. Dorcas has 
been instructed to have Warehouse sign over his property 
to her before the ceremony, thus insuring it to the nephew, 
her husband. As for the other people in the story, Plot- 
well has a sister Aurelia, who is a serious interpretation of 
the Haughty- Mavis type, and is known as one of the 
' philosophical madams '. She marries a young gull for 
his money. There are various episodes necessitating much 
disguising, and dialogue of no profit and little pleasure. 
Two characters, Bright and Newcut, are ghosts of True-wit 
and Clerimont ; Bannswright, the pander, takes the place 
of Cutbeard. There is to be granted to this comedy a 
certain dash and sprightliness. Indeed, I find recorded 
from Blackwood' s Magazine 11. 195-301 : * It deserves to 
rank' amongst the best of our early comedies, and the rich 
vein of humour which runs throughout will ever cause it 
to be perused with pleasure.' But it is entirely unworthy 
such praise. 

As illustration of some of the minor imitations of Epi- 
ccene found in the City Match, we would point out the 
' Acts and Monuments ' joke in the latter. Act 2, Sc. 3, 



Iviii Introduction 

p. 237 in Haz.-Dods., and Epiccene i. 2. 9; the description 
of the old widow, City Match 2. 4, p. 237, and that of 
Mrs. Otter, Epiccene 4. a. 92 ff. ; the account of ' strange 
sights', City Match 3. 3, p. 248, and Epiccene 2. 2. 34 fif. ; 
the speech of Seathrift, City Match 3. 3, p. 265, and that 
in Epiccene 2. 2. 3. Seathrift : ' Ha' you seen too a 
Gorgon's head that you stand speechless? or are you 
a fish in earnest ? ' Warehouse determines to marry in- 
stantly, 3. 3, pp. 266-7, in a speech modeled after Morose, 
2. 5 ; Seathrift refers to the silenc'd ministers, 4. i, p. 273, 
as does Trw^-^W.^ Epiccene 2. 6. 17; Plotwell discourages 
Aurelia's marriage with a clever man, 4. 2, p. 276, as 
True-wit does Morose's marriage with a clever woman, 
Epiccene 2. 2 ; the joke which Trusty makes, 4. 4. 
117, about the 'Preacher that would preach folks asleep 
still ', is repeated by Aurelia, 4. 2, p. 276 : 

A Sir John . . . that preaches the next parish once a week 
Asleep for thirty pounds a year. 

Many other examples of detailed similarities might be 
indicated, but this list should be sufficient to prove what 
the most casual reader of the City Match ought to observe — 
that the author owes most of what is good in his comedy 
to Ben Jonson ; but by interpreting seriously the satiric 
dialogue of Jonson's play he has introduced much that is 
disgusting rather than clever. 

After the City Match may be mentioned the Rival 
Friends, acted in 1631 and printed in 1632, the play to 
which attention is directed in the article on Jonson in the 
Dictionary of National Biography. The play, which is very 
rare, I have not seen ; but there is a copy of it in the Barton 
Collection of the Boston Public Library, Its author, Peter 
Hansted, was a vicar of Gretton, and the author of several 
miscellaneous works. Accounts of him may be found in 
the Dictionary of National BiograpJiy ; Allibone's Diet, of 
Authors \ Wood's A then. Oxon., Biog. Dram.-, Langbaine's 
Dram. Poets, in which it is said : ' Our author seems to be 



Literary Relationships lix 

much of the humour of Ben Johnson (whose greatest 
weakness was that he could not bear censure) ; and J. O. 
Halliwell notes in the Diet, of Old Eng. Plays, p. 211: 
' The scene between Loveall, Mungrell, and Hammershin 
in the third act, is copied from that between True-wit, Daw, 
and La-Foole in the fourth act of Ben Jonson's Silent 
Wommi. 

The third play to be named owes less than the first two 
to Epicoene\ but who can read the second act of She Stoops 
to Conquer, in which Hastings encourages the ' modest 
Marlowe ' to meet Kate Hardcastle, and not be convinced 
that Goldsmith had laughed over the dialogue between 
the bashful Dauphine and the experienced True-wit. Cf. 
Epiccene 4. i. 

The Spectator 251, surely derived a suggestion at least 
from Epiccene. Ralph Crotchet here describes a ' splenetic 
gentleman ' who bargained with a noisy vender of cord 
matches never to come into the street where he lived— with 
the result that on the following day all the cord-match- 
makers in London came to be bought off in like manner. 
Long before Morose ' has beene vpon diuers treaties with 
the Fish-wiues and Orenge-women ; and articles propounded 
betweene them '. 

When Scrooge in the Christmas Carol rails at his nephew 
on Christmas-eve about the futility of any compliments of 
the season, and indeed about the futility of any gracious 
or courteous greeting between man and man, it is almost 
as if Morose were repeating Epiccene 5. 3. 25 : 

Salute 'hem 1 I had rather doe anything, then weare out time so vn- 
fruitfully, sir. I wonder how these common formes, as god saue yoti, and 
yoii are ivell-come, are come to be a habit in our Hues, or, / am glad to see 
you I when I cannot see, what the profit can bee of these wordes, so long as 
it is no whit better with him , whose affaires are sad and grieuous, that he 
heares this salutation. 

Compare with this The Christmas Carol, Stave One. 

• A merry Christmas, uncle ! God save you ! ' . . . 

' Bah ! ' said Scrooge. ' Humbug ! Merry Christmas ! . . . What right 



Ix Introduction 

have you to be merry ? What reason have yon to be merry ? You're poor 
enough.' 

' Come then,' returned the nephew gaily, ' what right have you to be 
dismal ? What reason have you to be morose ? You're rich enough 1 . . . 
Don't be cross, uncle ! * 

' What else can I be when I live in such a world of fools as this ? Merry 
Christmas ! Out upon Merry Christmas ! What 's Christmas time to you 
but for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year 
older, but not an hour richer ; ... If I could work my will, every idiot who 
goes about with " Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his 
own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He 
should ! ' 

In her weakness for language, and her relish for ' ex- 
cellent choice phrase', Mrs. Otter has had many male 
kinsmen before and since her generation — Gobbos, Dog- 
berrys, and their ilk ; but the most famous of her descen- 
dants is Mrs. Malaprop, who surpasses the would-be lady- 
collegiate in the ' use of her oracular tongue ' and ' a nice 
derangement of epitaphs '. 

The works of Ben Jonson are sometimes claimed to have 
had direct influence upon the dramas of a kindred genius 
of the same century and another nation ^. Students both, 
their work represents not only original creation, but skilful 
borrowing and adaptation from classic and contemporary 
sources. Jonson might have said, as did Moliere when 
likenesses were pointed out between his Foiirberies de 
Scapin and Le Pedant joue of Cyrano de Bergerac, 
' Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve '. The inherent like- 
nesses of the men make it difficult to discern whether or 
not the comedies of the dramatist, whose VEtourdi (1653) 
received recognition three decades after The Tale of a Tub 
was written, may be said to be in any sense literary 
descendants oi Epiccene. A comparison of the half-dozen 
comedies of Moliere which most resemble this play brings 
a negative answer. 

Les Preciettses ridicides (1659) and Les Feinvies savantes 

' Leser, Eugene, On the relation of Ben Jonson'' s '■Epiccene ' to Moliire''s 
"■ Mideci7t malgre lui' and 'Femmes savantes,^ Mod. Lang. Notes, 7 (1892); 
8, pp. 489 ff. 



Literary Relationships Ixi 

(1671) bear comparison with the ' collegiates ', and the 
poetaster element in Epicozne. Le Medecin malgre lui 
(1666) satirizes the medical profession, as Cutbeard and 
Otter may be said to do that of ecclesiastical law; be- 
sides, it contains opinions concerning silence, a woman's 
greatest virtue. In UAvare (1667) Harpagon, like Morose, 
loves his money and pays court to a young woman. Le 
Misanthrope (1668) is the study of an egotist's withdrawal 
from society, but it entirely lacks the farcical treatment 
given the English misanthrope. Les Fourberies de Scapin 
(1671) has a trick-loving hero like True- wit, who vic- 
timizes two men with much the same device used to gull 
Daw and La-Foole (4. 5). 

Although both authors ridicule similar subjects, im- 
postors and parasites, pretenders to wit, learning, and social 
prestige ; although comic action is sometimes similar, tricks 
played, and punishment given by the same means ; although 
comic ideas in Jonson are used to raise laughter in the 
comedies of Moliere, there is no proof that Jonson was 
necessarily the source, in any case, of the character, in- 
cident, or idea. 

Resemblances are accounted for by the kinship of genius, 
and of the society in which these men wrote, and by the 
identity of the classic drama which served as models for both. 

D. Critical Estimate of Epicgene. 

From the time Dryden picked out Epiccene as the 
' pattern of a perfect play ' ^, and preferred it, ' before 
all other plays, I think justly, as I do its author, in 
judgement before all other poets ' ^ students of the drama 
have accorded the comedy a high place. Coleridge ^ is 
faintest in his praise, whereas Ward, while conceding that, 
* so far as the foundations of its plot are concerned, Epiccene 
would be properly described as an elaborate farce ', believes 

^ Essays, ed. Ker, i. 79. ^ Ibid. i. 131. 

^ Notes on Ben Jonson, Bohn, p. 42. 



Ixii Introduction 

it to be 'of its kind without a rival, unless we turn to the 
writings of a comic dramatist worthy to rank as Jonson's 
peer '^ — Moliere. To Symonds ^ and to Swinburne " it is 
a ' Titanic farce ' ; to Taine ^ ' a masterpiece ', ' an enchanting 
farce ' ; to Schlegel ^ it is the equal of Volpone and The 
Alchemist in the excellence of its plot; to Hazlitt^, who, 
like Schlegel, is repelled by Jonson's satiric spirit and love 
of the grotesque, it is the greatest of Jonson's comedies. 
So much for the critics' opinions. 

First, to Epicoene belongs the distinction of breaking the 
convention which assigned comic action to a foreign or 
fustian country. Unlike its predecessors, its scene is 
London, and, with a minuteness that is astounding, the 
Jacobean city is portrayed bustling with life and laughter. 
Streets are noisy with tradesmen, showmen, bearwards, 
gallants on horseback, and ladies in coaches ; Whitehall, 
Paris Garden, and the Cockpit teem with pleasure-seeking 
courtiers, citizens, and apprentices. It may even be objected 
that this multiplicity of detail and local reference obscure 
a picture where the larger outlines are neglected. But the 
objection does not hold for the reader who knows some- 
thing of the history of social England, nor for the spectator 
for whom the comedy was originally written. Moreover, 
local reference is unavoidable in comedy depicting the 
manners of a given time and country, which Jonson defi- 
nitely undertakes to do. 

Secondly, the intrigue deserves comment. Dryden's 
eulogy '^ is extravagant : ' The intrigue ... is the greatest 
and most noble of any pure unmixed comedy in any 
language ' ; yet the plot is singularly well contrived, full of 
movement, dash, and wit. If the scenes taken from Ovid 

^ Ward, History of Eng. Dram. Lit. 2. 365. 

^ Shakespeare s Predecessors, p. 52. 

^ A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 42. * English Lit. i. 342, 344. 

' Drain. Art and Lit., p. 465. * Ejig. Comic Writers, Bohn, p. 54. 

^ Essays, ed. Ker, i. 72. 



Critical Estimate of Epicoene Ixiii 

and Juvenal luxuriate in dialogue and retard the action 
temporarily, it is not without the consciousness of the 
dramatist, who considers such scenes an essential charac- 
teristic of the comedy in which 'repartee is one of the 
chiefest graces; the greatest pleasure of the audience is 
a chase of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed '. 
Besides, in every wit-combat Jonson accomplishes some 
second purpose, exhibiting the character of the speakers, 
describing persons to be introduced, recounting incidents 
taking place off the stage, or satirizing existent follies. 
The intrigue in its main outline is quite conventional, an 
impoverished knight scheming to obtain property from 
a rich and miserly uncle. The originality of the dramatist 
is shown in his treatment of the theme, in his manner of 
bringing about the denojiement, and in the diversity of 
characters, with the tormented old misanthrope in their 
midst. The ingenious device by which all the characters, 
even the chief victim, unwittingly further the nephew's 
scheme, makes possible a story in which the interest never 
flags, but grows to a climax in the surprise which the 
nephew keeps in store, for his fellows and for the spectators, 
till the final scene. 

The plot runs in this wise. Morose, having wished to 
disinherit his nephew, has found, through the agency of 
his barber, a quiet, respectable woman, whom he may 
marry. He did not know that Cutbeard was in Dauphine's 
pay, and had heard of the woman through the nephew, 
who confides to some of his friends that the bride-to-be 
has promised to divide the fortune with him. The play 
opens on the wedding-morning, when a hasty marriage 
takes place, despite the disinterested interference of True- 
wit. The ceremony being over, the nephew and friends 
throng the house, and make the old man miserable. Among 
the guests are Dauphine's friends, True-wit and Clerimont, 
two boastful cowardly knights. Daw and La-Foole, a bear- 
garden captain, Otter, and his wife, and a group of idle, 



Ixiv Introduction 

affected women. Morose, outraged by the behavior of 
his bride and her friends, seeks a divorce. The barber and 
captain, disguised by True-wit, expound the canonical im- 
pediments to him. Determined to escape the ' wedlock 
noose' at any cost, Morose lies in regard to the twelfth, 
but is defeated by Epicoene's refusal to give him up. The 
two knights then bear witness that Morose is a deceived 
husband, and released by the tenth impediment ; but the 
lawyer's interpretation of the clause defeats him again. 
Finally, Dauphine promises to release his disgraced relation 
from his marriage contract for certain money considera- 
tions. The uncle yields, and the nephew fulfils his promise, 
to the astonishment of his confederates, by pulling off the 
disguise of the talkative bride and alleged mistress of Sir 
John Daw and Sir Amorous La-Foole, and showing 
Epicoene to be a boy. Such a tale, with its subordinate 
episodes of wooing, playing pranks, and revenging practical 
jokes, is enough to make ' the mighty chests of the com- 
panions of Drake and Essex shake with uncontrollable 
laughter ' ^. There is, of course, a certain disregard of 
probabilities, but this fact obtrudes itself little because of 
the relation of the episodes to the important matter of 
Morose's marriage. Moreover, from this charge no comedy 
is free which resorts to disguise, although in this case — 
because of the prevailing custom of wearing masks among 
fashionable women — less exception can be taken. Nor 
from the same charge are comedies free which are built 
with the form and proportion of classic models, as is 
eminently true of Epiccene. 

Corneille and Racine never obeyed the unities more 
closely than does Jonson in this comedy. As for time — 
the play opens as Clerimont dresses himself for the day, 
surely no earlier than ten o'clock, and ends two or three 
hours after dinner, at latest three o'clock in the afternoon. 
As for action— the outline just given of the plot shows how 

^ Taine, Eng. Lit. I. 343. 



Critical Estimate of Epicoene Ixv 

connected and complete it is, despite its complexity, and 
how the numerous episodes gain an air of naturalness by 
the fact that they occur on a day which uncle and nephew 
have used every contrivance to bring about. As for place 
— though Dryden is in error when he says the action ' lies 
all within the compass of two houses, and after the first 
act in one ' ,^ yet unity of place is carefully observed. One 
scene is in Clerimont's lodgings, one in Daw's, one at 
Mrs. Otter's house, one in a lane close by, and the re- 
maining; scenes are in the house of Morose. But the five 
places are in the immediate neighbourhood of one another : 
Epicoene is ' lodg'd i' the next street ' ^ to Morose, ' right 
ouer against the barbers ; where Sir Iohn Daw lyes ' ^. 
Mrs. Otter's home is ' but ouer the way, hard by ' ^. 

The classic rules of proportion are observed, no less than 
the unities. Act i is an admirable protasis, introducing 
character after character, but revealing not at all the direc- 
tion the action will take from the given situation. From 
the beginning of Act 2 to the meeting of the bride, Act 
3. 4, is the epitasis. The catastasis, embroiling Morose in 
many new difficulties, grows to a climax in the last scene 
of Act 5, where the catastrophe occurs, one ' so admirable, 
that, when it is done, no one of the audience would think 
the poet could have missed it ; and yet it was concealed so 
much before the last scene that any other way would sooner 
have entered into your thoughts ^.' 

The purpose of Epicoene ' to profit and delight ' ** is as 
classical as the structure. Jonson's method of achieving 
the first is by making ridiculous the follies of his contem- 
poraries, and the second, by using interesting story, comic 
episode, and witty dialogue. The subjects of satire are 
the frivolous court ladies, the vulgar citizen's wife, the 
noise-hating misanthrope, the amorous knight, the poetaster, 

^ Essays, ed. Ker, i. 83. ^ Epicosne i. 2. 28. 

^ ibid. I. 2. 59. * ibid. 3. 3. 67. 

' Dryden, Essays, ed. Ker, i. 86. * Epiccene, ANOTHER 2. 



Ixvi Introduction 

the barber, incapable of holding his tongue, and the bear- 
garden captain. Jonson resorts not only to dramatic satire, 
and renders his characters contemptible by their actions 
and words, but to expository satire as well ; and all the 
characters to a slight degree, but especially True-wit, are 
mouth-pieces for the dramatist's invective. Several follies 
are exploited in a single character, and whipped, if a lash 
be handy. The follies and the punishment excite laughter 
rather than sympathy and pity, so much so, that the purpose 
of delighting the spectators seems more amply fulfilled than 
the purpose of profiting them. This is true of the allot- 
ments of reward, as well as of punishment, it is the clever, 
not the honest, man that wins his end : Cutbeard gets the 
lease of his house, though he has deceived Morose at every 
turn ; True-wit and Clerimont by unparalleled prevarication 
are always victorious, until Dauphine's coup in Act 5 ; poor 
Daw and La-Foole are punished, not for immorality, but 
because * you may take their vnderstandings in a purse- 
net '. Even the main objects of satire, Morose and the 
' ladies-collegiates ', are made contemptible with emphasis 
less on moral than intellectual shortcomings. Though both 
are pointed out, it is the social monstrousness of the isolated 
misanthrope on the one hand, and the loose-lived women 
on the other, that Jonson judges, and the judgment is 
made with a bitterness engendered by his own surly nature, 
and inherited from the scourgers of society in classic 
times. This bitterness of tone neither the gaiety of in- 
cident nor of dialogue quite counteracts. Epiccene contains 
no distinctly moral personage. Even True-wit, the pedant, 
the expositor of morals, delights in lying, and ' invents 
from mere phlegm '. This comes, not because Jonson lacks 
a conscience, but because his is an ' imperturbable intel- 
lectual conscience ', which enjoys less showing virtue ad- 
mirable than showing vice laughable and contemptible. 
In all his comic characters, even those in Epiccene, where on 
the whole the satire is lighter than is his custom, Jonson 



Critical Estimate of Epicosne Ixvii 

judges humanity first according to an intellectual and 
social standard, and last by a moral one. 

Jonson's lack of sympathy with his comic victim is so 
complete in the punishment of Morose that the comic 
element is in danger of being lost, as it is lost in the punish- 
ment of Shylock, and in that of Sir Giles Overreach, who, 
in Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, fails in a 
scheme to circumvent his nephew, and goes mad. Certainly 
the conception of the comic changes from generation to 
generation, and fewer things, at least very different things, 
challenge laughter, as the dignity of the individual comes 
to be recognized. But comic punishment always defeats 
itself when it goes beyond a deserved and temporary 
humiliation and passes into the realm of the irretrievable. 
In the case of Morose, it is not so much the fact as the 
spirit of the punishment which is harsh and unfitted for 
comedy. * I'll not trouble you, till you trouble me with 
your funerall, which I care not how soone it come.' If, in- 
stead of this derision, Jonson could have sent a smile of 
sympathy after the defeated old man, the effect would have 
been happier, but it would have been antagonistic to the 
satiric nature of his genius^. Moreover, his very method 
of character-creation barred out such an end. He had 
a scholar's curiosity in psychology, and looked at men as 
governed in their actions by some peculiar attribute of 
character. Therefore he constructed a comic personage 
by choosing a general idea or ruling passion, adding other 
qualities, and bestowing upon it a typical name. So logically 
made a product is apt to be without soul ; its very name 
lends it an air of unreality, and the author regards it im- 
personally, as an instrumentto respond to his touch. It is 
trite to say that Jonson lays himself open to criticism in 
these points, and that only in his greatest creations, by 
sheer force of will, has he overcome the difficulties of his 

^ Cf. the punishment of Alceste in Le Misanthrope. 

e a 



Ixviii Introduction 

analytic method and his palpably unsympathetic attitude, 
and, in spite of both, created beings who live. He has done 
so in Volpone and in Sir Epicure Mammon. Has he done 
so in Morose? Some critics, the greatest among them 
Coleridge and Taine, answer in the negative, while others, 
Dryden and GifTord, answer in the affirmative. 

Taine denominates Morose ' a mania gathered from the 
old sophists, a babbling with horror of noise. . . . The poet 
has the air of a doctor who has undertaken to record 
exactly all the desires of speech, all the necessities of 
silence, and to record nothing else ^.' Taine would object, 
then, that Morose remains an abstract idea or ' humor ' 
throughout the play. Coleridge asserts that 'the defect 
in Morose lies in this — that the accident is not a promi- 
nence growing out of, and nourished by, the character 
which still circulates in it, but that the character, such as it 
is, rises out of, or rather consists in, the accident ^. Taine's 
objection is easily answered by showing Morose to be 
not so attenuated a character as he believes. In addition to 
hatred of noise and love of his own voice, Morose is an 
egotist, a miser, a tyrant with his servants, and a victim to 
senile love. Coleridge's criticism pierces to the root of 
the matter, but it, too, is answered by showing that Morose's 
sensitiveness to noise is simply an outgrowth of exaggerated 
misanthropy. The story of the comedy makes this plain. 
A nephew needs money ; his uncle has plenty, but refuses 
to help him ; the nephew then schemes to extort money 
from the uncle, not only a present sum, but the whole 
inheritance, which is his by right ; he succeeds. The 
nephew's purpose is attained by playing, first on his latent 
susceptibility to youthful charm, and then on his horror of 
noise. 

Dryden saw that Morose's physical aversion to noise was 
due to deeper causes, and wrote : ' We may consider him 
first to be naturally of a delicate hearing, as many are, to 

* Eng. ZzV. t. 325. ^ Literary Remains 2. 279. 



Critical Estimate of Epicoene Ixix 

whom all sharp sounds are unpleasant ; and secondly, we 
may attribute much of it to the peevishness of his age, or 
the wayward authority of an old man in his own house ^.' 
As if it could strengthen his argument, Dryden repeated 
a tradition imparted to him by ' diverse persons, that Ben 
Johnson was actually acquainted with such a man, one 
altogether as ridiculous as he is here represented '. 

Upton and Whalley also attacked the character of 
Morose. It was in defending him against these students 
of Jonson that Gifford charged them with mistaking 
Jonson's meaning. Morose's dislike of noise ' is an acci- 
dental quality altogether dependent upon the master- 
passion, or "humor/' a most inveterate and odious self- 
love. This will explain his conduct in many places where 
it has been taxed with inconsistency, and vindicate the deep 
discernment of the poet ^.' 

We choose to think of Morose thus : to take him, despite 
his ridiculousness, to a certain extent seriously ; to place 
him, because of the mental and moral source of his ridi- 
culousness, with legitimate comic characters. He may be 
adequately understood through his speech and actions in 
the comedy of which he is the central figure, ' and to under- 
stand a character is to recognize it as true to nature. If it 
can be traced home to that fountain-head, and if the cir- 
cumstances which effect its development. act upon it in 
consonance with its real " humor ", all has been done 
which can be done by dramatic characterization ^.' 

Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La-Foole are the greatest 
triumphs in character-drawing that the comedy affords. 
In the first Jonson shows the irresistibly comic aspects of 
the garrulous, ignorant, would-be poet and statesman, who 
' buys titles, and nothing else of bookes in him ', who has no 
reverence for the achievements of scholar or artist, but 
proclaims his own virtues with harmless insistence. In the 

' Essays, ed. Ker, p. i. 83 ff. ^ Jonson's Works 3. 399. 

^ Ward, Hist, of Eng. Dram. Lit. 2. 405. 



Ixx Introduction 

second is ridiculed the courtier whose love of feminine 
society and the family name incite him to plan continual 
festivities, invite his guests ' aloud, out of his windore ', and 
' giue 'hem presents ... to be laught at '. Both are types 
of extreme cowardice, and the picture Jonson has drawn of 
them in the famous scene in Act 4, where they are ready 
to give ' any satisfaction, sir, but fighting ', is immortal. 
John Daw in his madrigal scene is reminiscent of Mathew ^ ; 
in his criticisms of the ancients, of Tucca and Ovid Senior^ ; 
in his knowledge of titles, of Clove ^ ; while Asotus is his 
legitimate ancestor, letting Crites call him without rebuke 
Jack-dcnu'^; and Madrigal inherits his qualities of a bad 
versifier and worse critic ^. Jonson had grown practised 
in making ' braveries ' also, before he reached the height 
of his success in Amorous, whose weakness for the ladies 
had been the ' humour ' of Fastidious Brisk, and whose 
slavery to fashion had been shared by Mathew, Sogliardo, 
and Asotus. Jonson uses both Daw and La-Foole as 
vehicles for his satire on the gallants of the day — their 
extravagant habits of speech and dress, their attempted 
witticisms, assumed melancholy, and various affectations. 

There is not space for all the diverse and admirable 
characters of Epicoene to be discussed, but a word is due to 
the ' ladies-collegiates ' upon whose periwigged and poma- 
tumed heads Jonson poured his most humiliating satire. 
This group of women represent various social spheres, but 
they are all satirized for ungrounded pretention to know- 
ledge and worldly position, for their manifold affectations, 
and their frankly profligate behavior. To identify the 
organizations aimed at in ' the new foundation ', is as un- 
necessary as it is impossible, but it is agreed that women's 
clubs existed, as Ward says, ' devoted to the pursuit of a 
very undesirable course of education' ^. Colman asserts that 

^ Every Man In 4. i, p. 99. ° Poet. i. i, p. 380, 

* Every Man Out 3. i, p, 95. * Cyji. Rev. 5. 2, p. 323. 

^ S. of Neius 4. I, p. 255. ^ Hist, of Eng. Dram, Lit. 2. 366. 



Critical Estimate of Epicoene Ixxi 

in his day they were to be found in London ^, and Gififord's 
account of the matter is that ' some combinations of the 
kind ' existing at the time Epicoene was written were ex- 
posed with such overwhelming contempt that ' no traces of 
them, as here drawn, are ever afterwards discoverable. Our 
days have witnessed an attempt to revive the " collegiates " — 
but this was a water-suchy club, merely ridiculous ; and so 
unsubstantial as not to require the clarion of the cock, 
but " to melt into thin air " at the twittering of a wren ' 2. 
Later, Moli^re exposed with a lighter touch, but with much 
the same fearlessness and unmitigated derision, the pedantry 
and affectations of the women of his generation. But he 
did not, like Jonson, depict unmoral beings. Jonson's 
lack of sympathetic insight is always apparent in his por- 
trayal of women, and never more so than here. These 
heartless, soulless ladies bustle through the comedy, con- 
ciliating the men, and betraying one another, professedly 
searching for admiration. There is not an alleviating 
quality to divide among the group, unless it be found in 
the broadly comical character of Mrs. Otter, who is after 
all only a pretender to the ' college honours '. She is an 
excellent foil for the exquisite ladies, and her awkward 
attempts to imitate them, her ignorance, and her high- 
flown language, make her a natural and not unwholesome 
comic figure. 

When we come to the question whether Epiccsne be- 
longs to comedy, or to farce, we must recognize that 
the classification depends on the interpretation given these 
words. There is no doubt that Jonson, working with 
classic models in mind, intended to produce a pure 
comedy^. Modern love of exactness has given to the 

^ Supra, p. xix. "^ Jonson's Works 3. 481. 

' Aristotle, Poetics, ed. Butcher, 5. 21 : 'An imitation of people of mean 
type, having some defect or ugliness not painful.' Sidney, Defeytse of Poesy, 
ed. Cook, p. 28 : ' An imitation of the common errors of our life, which he 
representeth in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be, so as it is 
impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one.' 



Ixxii Introduction 

lower sorts of comedy the name farce, where, however, 
according to the latest dictionary definition of the term, 
Epiccene does not belong ^. As dramatic critics, Dryden ^ 
and Schlegel ^ have left other opinions of the exact nature 
oi, farce, the former making it depend on the characteriza- 
tion, the latter on the plot and the dramatist's attitude 
toward his work. Under Dryden's definition Epiccrne 
would be comedy, under Schlegel's it, and all comedies of 
satire, would be farce. But classification is, after all, of 
secondary importance, and may change as tastes and ideas 
change. What is important is the unalterable character of 
the drama itself — a comedy built on classic models, de- 
veloping a carefully planned intrigue, exhibiting studies in 
* humour ' and the manners of early seventeenth century 
London, satirizing contem.porary follies as intellectually 
and socially rather than morally awry, and because of an 
abnormal weakness in its central character, introducing into 
the action an unusual amount of low comedy. 

^ N. E. D.: 'A farce is a dramatic work (usually short.) which has for its 
sole object to excite laughter.' 

^ Essays, ed. Ker, i. 135: 'The persons and actions of a farce are all 
unnatural, and the manners false.' ' Farce consists of forced humours, and 
unnatural events.' 

^ Di-aiH. Art and Lit., p. 181 : 'If the poet plays in a sportive humour with 
his own inventions, the result is farce' ; p. 311 : 'Whatever forms a singular 
exception, and is only conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to 
the arbitrary exaggeration of farce.' 



EPICOENE 

OR 

THE SILENT WOMAN 
TEXT 



EDITOR'S NOTE 

The text adopted for the present edition of Epicoene is 
that of a folio in the Yale University Library, which bears 
on its general title-page the imprint : ' Printed by William 
Stansby. An°D. 1616.' Except for hning, paging, and the 
correction of certain typographical errors, the text here 
given is identical with that of the folio. Attention is called 
to correction in the variants. Not only in order to reach 
final accuracy in regard to the text of Epiccene itself, but 
for the sake of those interested in the variations existing 
between individual copies of Jonson's First Folio, there 
will be found in the variants all differences in the folio 
readings of the play under consideration. Of the later 
editions, only variants of intrinsic import are included. 
Inconsistency of spelling and punctuation, in even the most 
modern texts, makes of this class of variants a bulk so dis- 
proportionate to its value, that they have been eliminated, 
save in exceptional cases, but may be found summarily 
treated in the discussion of the editions in the Introduction. 

Hills's duodecimo, being a reprint of the Folio of 1692, is 
not treated separately except in variations from its original ; 
the texts of 1739 and 1768 bear the same relation to the 
edition of 1717, and Cunningham's to that of Gifford. 

Reference to the various editions is made under the 
following abbreviations : — 

F = Folio in the Yale University Library : ' Printed by 

William Stansby. An" D. 1616.' 
Fj = Folio in the British Museum : ' Imprinted at j 

London by | Will Stansby | An"^ D. 1616 \ .' 
F, = Folio in the British Museum : ' London [ printed 



Editor's Note 

by W: I Stansby, and are | to be sould by | Rich: 

Meighen. | An° D. 1616. | .' 
Q — Quarto of 1620. 
1640 = Folio of 1640. 
1692 = Folio of 1693. 
H = Reprint of 1692 by H. Hills. 
:Z 7i 7 = Edition of 1716, of which vol. 2, containing 

Epiccene, is dated 1717. 
1739, 1768 = Reprints of 1 7 1 7. 
W = Edition of Peter Whalley, 1756. 
G = Edition of William Gififord, 18 16. 
M = Mermaid Edition, 1895. 



EPICOENE, 

OR 

The filent Woman. 
A Comcedie, 

Ad:ed in the yeere 1609. By 

the Children of her Maiefties 

Rev el Is. 

The Author B.I. 



Horat. 
Vt Jis tu fimllis Call, Byrrhi^^ latronum, 
Non ego Jim Caprt, neg^ Sulci. Cur metuas me ? 



LONDON, 

Printed by WILLIAM STANSBY, 

M. DC. XVI. 



[527] 



TO THE TRVLY 

NOBLE, BY ALL 

TITLES. 

Sir Francis Stuart 



Sir, 



71 /JTY hope is not fo nourijh'd by example, as it will 
I m/ m conclude^ this dunibe peece Jljoiild pleafe you, 
JL f .M^ by caufe it hath pleas d others before : but by 
trufl, that when yozt haiie read it, you will find 
it worthy to haue dif-pleas'd none. This makes, that I now lo 
number you, not onely in the Names of fauour, but the 
Names of iufice, to what I write ; and doe, prefently, call 
you to the exercife of that noblefl, and majilyefi vcrtue : as 
coueting rather to be freed in my fame, by the authority of 
a ludge, then tJie credit of an Vnder taker. Read therefore, 15 
/ pray you, and cenfure. There is not a line, or fyllable ifi 
it changed from the fimplicity of the firfl Copy. And, when 
you, Jh all confider, tJirough the certaine hatred of fome, how 
much a mans innocency may bee indangerd by an vn-certaine 
accufatio7i ; you will, I doubt not, fo beginne to hate the 20 
iniquitie of fucli natures, as I fhall lone the contumely done 
me, whofe end tvas fo honorable, as to be wifd off by your 
fenience. 

Your vnprofitable, but true louer, 

Ben. Ionson. 25 

8 by cause] because 1Q^2. . . 25 Ionson] Johnson 1602. The entire 

■ dedication is omitted II 1789 176S. 



[528] 



The Perfons of the Play. 



Morose. A Gent, that loues no noife. 

Davp. Evgenie. a Knight his nephew. 

Clerimont. a Ge7it. his friend. 

Trve-wit. Another friend. 

Epiccene. a yong Gent, fuppos'd the filent Woman. 

loH. Daw. a Knight, her feruant. 

Amorovs La Fogle. A Knight alfo. 

Thom: Otter. A land, and fea-Captaine. 

CvTBERD. A Barber. 

MvTE. Otie ^Morose his feruants. 

Mad. Havghty. \ 

Mad. Centavre. \ Ladies Collegiates. 

Mrs Mavis. ) 



15 Mrs Trvsty. 
Mrs Otter. 



The La. Havghties woman. 

The Captaines wife. [Pretenders. 

Parson. 

Pages. 

Servants. 



THE SCENE 
LONDON. 



I The Persons of the Play] Dramatis Personae G 2 no] not 16iO 

1692 H 3 Davp. Evgenie] Daiip. Eugene 2692 H; Sir Dauphine 

Eugenie G 4 Clerimont] Ned Clerimont G 7 loH. Daw] 

Sir John Daw G 8 Amorovs La Foole] Amarovs La-Fool i6.92 H; 

Sir Amorous La-Foole G 13 Collegiates] Collegiate l&iO . . . T7Q8 

14 M" Mavis] Mad. Mavis IMO . . . 1717 15 M" Trvsty] 

Mrs. Mavis 1640 1692 II 16 Pretenders] Listed as sepa7-ate performers 

H . . . 1768 17 Parson] is followed by Page to Clerimont G 

21 London] is followed by The Principal Comoedians &c. 16i0 . . .1768 



[529] 



EPICOENE 

OR 

The filent Woman. 

PROLOG VE\ 

TRuth fayes, of old, the art of making plaies 
Was to content the people ; & their praife 
Was to the Poet money, wine, and bayes. 

But in this age, a sed: of writers are, 

That, onely, for particular likings care, 5 

And will tafte nothing that is populare. 

With fuch we mingle neither braines, nor brefls ; 
Our wiflies^ like to thofe (make publique feafts) 
Are not to pleafe the cookes taftes, but the guefts. 

Yet, if thofe cunning palates hether come, lo 

They fhall find guefts entreaty, and good roome ; 
And though all relifh not, fure, there will be fome, 

That, when they leaue their feates, fliall make 'hem fay, 
Who wrot that piece, could fo haue wrote a play : 
But that, he knew, this was the better way. 15 

For, to prefent all cuftard, or all tart, 

And haue no other meats, to beare a part, 

Or to want bread, and fait, were but courfe art. 

The Poet prayes you then, with better thought 

To fit ; and, when his cates are all in brought, 20 

Though there be none far fet, there will deare-bought 

^ Prologve] G prints in stanzas of three lines ; Prologve F^ 

8 ( ) om. 1640 . . , 9 Are] and il/ cookes tastes] cookes taste 7640 

1692 H\ cook's taste WG lo hether] hither lUQ . , . 21 far fet] 

farre fet Q ; far-fet 1640 . . . 

B 



lo The filent Woman 

Be fit for ladies: fome for lords, knights, fquires, 
Some for your waiting wench, and citie-wires, 
Some for your men, and daughters of white-Friars. 
[530] 35 Nor is it, onely, while you keepe your feate 

Here, that his feafl will laft ; but you fliall eate 
A weeke at ord'naries, on his broken meat : 
If his Mufe be true, 
Who commends her to you. 



occafiOfCd ANOTHER. 

liyfojne 

perjons ^ ■ AHc cnds of all, who for the Scene doe write, 

tn?ferti 



T 



7ient ex- JL Are, or fliould be, to profit, and delight. 
ception. ^nd ftill't hath beene the praife of all beft times, 
So perfons were not touch'd, to taxe the crimes. 
5 Then, in this play, which we prefent to night. 
And make the object of your eare, and fight, 
On forfeit of your felues, thinke nothing true : 
Left fo you make the maker to iudge you. 
For he knowes. Poet neuer credit gain'd 
10 By writing truths, but things (like truths) well fain'd. 
If any, yet, will (with particular llight 

Of application) wreft what he doth write ; 
And that he meant or him, or her, will fay : 
They make a libell, which he made a play. 

23 waiting wench] waiting- wench IV G 27 ord'naries] ordinaries ^1 

IMO . . . 1717 MN. om. F^ 1640 . . . Inserted by W G as footnote 

7 true :] true Q 8 Lest] Least F^ 10 (like truthes) well fayn'd 
Fx ; like truths, well feign'd G 



H 



The filent Woman ii 



A 61 I. Scene I. 

Clerimont, Boy, Trve-wit. 

A' you got the fong yet perfed I ga' you, boy? He comes 
Boy. Yes, fir. ""',. 

' _ making 

Cle. Let me heare it. himfeife 

Boy. You fliall, fir, but i'faith let no body elfe. ''^'"^-^• 

CLE. Why, I pray? 6 

Boy. It will get you the dangerous name of a Poet 
in towne, fir, befides me a perfed: deale of ill will at the 
manfion you wot of, whofe ladie is the argument of it : 
where now I am the welcom'ft thing vnder a man that 
comes there. lo 

Cle. I thinke, and aboue a man too, if the truth were 
rack'd out of you. 

Boy. No faith, I'll confefiTe before, fir. The gentle- 
women play with me, and throw me o' the bed ; and carry 
me in to my lady ; and fliee kifTes me with her oil'd face ; 15 
and puts a perruke o' my head ; and askes me an' I will 
weare her gowne ; and I fay, no : and then flie hits me 
a blow o' the eare, and calls me innocent, and lets me goe. 

Cle. No maruell, if the dore bee kept fliut againft your 
mafter, when the entrance is fo eafie to you — well fir, you 20 
fliall goe there no more, left | I bee faine to feeke your voyce [531] 
in my ladies ruflies, a fortnight hence. Sing, fir. Boyfings. 

Try. Why, here's the man that can melt away his time, 
and neuer feeles it ! what, betweene his miftris abroad, and 
his engle at home, high fare, foft lodging, fine clothes, and 25 

Ad I. Scene I.] includes Scenes II, III, IV. A Room in Clerimont's 
House. G 
Clerimont] Cleremont 1692 H 

2, 4, 6, 13 Boy] Page G M 5 pray] pay Q 7 besides me] besides 

get me i76S 8 ladie] lady j^i 15 in to] into 1692 /f shee] she i^^ 

oil'd] oyl'd F^ 22 MN. Page sings G 

B a 



12 The Jilent Woman [act i 

his fiddles ; hee thinkes the houres ha' no wings, or the day- 
no poft-horfe. Well, fir gallant, were you ftrooke with 
the plague this minute, or condemn'd to any capitall 
punifliment to morrow, you would beginne then to thinke, 
30 and value euery article o' your time, efteeme it at the true 
rate, and giue all for't. 

CLE. Why, what fliould a man doe ? 

Trv. Why, nothing : or that, which when 'tis done, is 

the time, ^s idle. HarkcH after the next horfe-race, or hunting- 

35 match ; lay wagers, praife Puppy, or Pepper-come, White- 

foote, Franklin ; fweare vpon White-maynes partie ; fpend 

aloud, that my lords may heare you ; vifite my ladies at 

night, and bee able to giue 'hem the character of euery 

bowler, or better o' the greene. Thefe be the things, 

40 wherein your fafliionable men exercife themfelues, and 

I for companie. 

Cle. Nay, if I haue thy authoritie, I'le not leaue yet. 

Come, the other are confiderations, when wee come to haue 

gray heads, and weake hammes, moift eyes, and flirunke 

45 members. Wee'll thinke on 'hem then ; then wee'll pray, 

and fall. 

Trv. I, and deftine onely that time of age to goodneflfe, 
which our want of abilitie will not let vs employ in euill ? 
Cle. Why, then 'tis time enough. 
50 Trv. Yes : as if a man fliould fleepe all the terme, and 
thinke to effed his bufinede the laft day. O, Clerimont, 
this time, becaufe it is an incorporeall thing, and not fubjed 
CO fenfe, we mocke our felues the finelieft out of it, with 
vanitie, and miferie indeede : not feeking an end of wretch- 
55 edneffe, but onely changing the matter ftill. 
Cle. Nay, thou'lt not leaue now — 
Trv. See but our common difeafe ! with what iuftice 

27 Gallant F^ strooke] struck IQiO,. . 30 article] particle 1640 . . . 

1717 33 MN. om. F^. . .; W G insert as footnote 35 Puppy . . . ] 

Puppy ... F^ 36 spend] speak 1640 ... 38 bee] be F^ 41 com- 

panie] company /^i 44 moyst F^ 48 our] ou Q 56 now] no 1739 



SC. i] The Jilent Woman 13 

can wee complaine, that great men will not looke vpon 
vs, nor be at leifure to giue our affaires fuch difpatch, as 
wee exped, when wee will neuer doe it to our felues : nor 60 
heare, nor regard our felues. 

CLE. Foh, thou haft read Plvtarchs moralls, now, 
or fome fuch tedious fellow ; and it fliowes fo vilely with 
thee : 'Fore god, 'twill fpoile thy wit vtterly. Talke me of 
pinnes, and feathers, and ladies, and ruflies, and fuch things : 65 
and leaue this Stoicitie alone, till thou mak'ft fermons. 

Trv. Well, fir. If it will not take, I haue learn'd to loofe 
as little of my kindnefle, as I can. I'le doe good to no 
man againft his will, certainely. When were you at the 
colledge ? 70 

CLE. What colledge ? 

Trv. As if you knew not ! 

CLE. No faith, I came but from court, yefterday. 

Trv. Why, is it not arriu'd there yet, the newes ? 
A new foundation, | fir, here i' the towne, of ladies, that call 75 [532] 
themfelues the Collegiates, an order betweene courtiers, 
and country-madames, that Hue from their hufbands ; and 
giue entertainement to all the Wits, and Braucries o' the 
time, as they call 'hem: crie downe, or vp, what they like, 
or diflike in a braine, or a fafhion, with moft mafculine, or 80 
rather hermaphroditicall authoritie : and, euery day, gaine 
to their colledge some new probationer. 

CLE. Who is the Prefident ? 

Trv. The graue, and youthfull matron, the lady 
Havghty. 85 

CLE. A poxe of her autumnall face, her peec'd beautie : 
there's no man can bee admitted till fliee be ready, now 
adaies, till fliee has painted, and perfum'd, and wafli'd, 
and fcour'd, but the boy here ; and him fliee wipes her 

60 nor heare] not heare llfV? 64 Talke me] talk to me W G M 

73 but] bt Q 11 country] countrey F-^ 78 Wits, and Braueries F^ 

79 cry/\ 81 hennaphroditical /^i . . . 83 president /"^ 86 beauty/^, 
87 she /"i 89 sour'd . . . heere F^ 



14 The filent Woman [act i 

90 oil'd lips vpon, like a fponge. I haue made a fong, I pray 
thee heare it, o' the fubied. 



S' 



Song. 

' till to be neat, ft ill to be dreft, 
\^^ As, you were going to a feaft ; 
Still to be poiCdred, ft ill perfumd : 
95 Lady, it is to be prefnmd, 

TJiongh arts hid caufes at^e not fotind, 
All is not ftuwet, all is not found. 

Giue me a looke, giue me a face. 
That makes fimplicitie a grace ; 
100 Robes loofely flowing, haire as free : 

Such fweet negleSi more taketh me. 
Then all th' adidteries of art. 
They ftrike mi7ie eyes, but 7tot my heart. 

Trv. And I am, clearely, o' the other fide: I loue 
105 a good dreffing, before any beautie o' the world. O, 
a woman is, then, like a delicate garden ; nor, is there one 
kind of it : flie may varie, euery houre ; take often counfell 
of her glafle, and choofe the beft. If fliee haue good eares, 
iTiew 'hem ; good haire, lay it out ; good legs, weare short 
1 10 cloathes ; a good hand, discouer it often ; pradife any art, 
to mend breath, clenfe teeth, repaire eye-browes, paint, and 
profeflTe it. 

Cle. How ? publiquely ? 

Trv. The doing of it, not the manner : that muft bee 

115 priuate. Many things, that feeme foule, i' the doing, doe 

pleafe, done. A lady fliould, indeed, ftudie her face, when 

wee thinke fliee lleepes: nor, when the dores are fliut, 

fhould men bee inquiring, all is facred within, then. Is it 

90 oyld lippes F.^ 93 As,] As IMO ... 94 bee F^ 103 Thy F^ 

they F^Q... 105 beauty F^ 107 shee F^ loS chnse F^ 1640 

109 show F^ 1640 . . . legges F^ 116 indeede, study ... we thinke 

she Fi 



SC. l] The Jilent Woman 15 

for vs to see their perrukes put on, their falfe teeth, their 
complexion, their eye-browes, their nailes ? you fee guilders 120 
will not worke, but inclos'd. They muft not difcouer, how 
little ferues, with the helpe of art, to adorne a great deale- 
How long did the canuas hang afore | Aid-gate? were the [533] 
people fuffer'd to fee the cities Loue^ and Charitie, while 
they were rude ftone, before they were painted, and 125 
burnifh'd ? No. No more fliould feruants approch their 
miftrefles, but when they are compleat, and finifli'd. 

CLE. Well faid, my Trve-wit. 

Trv. And a wife ladie will keepe a guard alwaies vpon 
the place, that fliee may doe things fecurely. I once 130 
followed a rude fellow into a chamber, where the poore 
madame, for hafte, and troubled, fnatch'd at her perruke, to 
couer her baldnede : and put it on, the wrong way. 

Cle. O prodigie ! 

Trv. And the vn-confcionable knaue held her in 135 
complement an houre, with that reuerft face, when I flill 
look'd when fliee fliould talke from the t'other fide. 

Cle. Why, thou fliould'ft ha' releeu'd her. 

Trv. No faith, I let her alone, as wee'l let this argument, 
if you pleafe, and pafle to another. When faw you Dav- 140 
RHINE EVGENIE ? 

Cle. Not thefe three daies. Shall we goe to him this 
morning ? he is very melancholique, I heare. 

Trv. Sicke o' the vncle ? is hee ? I met that ftifife 
peece of formalitie, his vncle, yefterday, with a huge turbant 145 
of night-caps on his head, buckled ouer his eares. 

Cle. O, that's his cuftome when he walkes abroad. 
Hee can endure no noife, man. 

Trv. So I haue heard. But is the difeafe fo ridiculous 



120 nayles /^i 122 serues] serue ^ 124 Cities i^j 125 and 

h\xmi%\i A'] -p. Zll begins here F^ 126 Seruants approach 130 she Fi 

137 'tother i^; tother 1640 .. . 138 releiu'd /^i 141 Eugene 

1692 H 143 melancholick i692 , . . melancholy (7 144 is he i^i 
145 formality F^ 



i6 77?^ filent Woman [act i 

J 50 in him, as it is made? they fay, hee has beene vpon diuers 
treaties with the Fifli-wiues, and Orenge-women ; and 
articles propounded betweene them : mary, the Chimney- 
fweepers will not be drawne in. 

Cle. No, nor the Broome-men : they ftand out ftififely. 
^55 He cannot endure a Coftard- monger, he fwounes if he heare 
one. 

Trv. Me thinkes, a Smith fhould be ominous. 
Cle. Or any Hamer-man. A Brafier is not fufifer'd to 
dwel in the parifli, nor an Armorer. He would haue 
160 hang'd a Pewterers 'prentice once vpon a fliroue-tuefdaies 
• riot, for being o' that trade, when the reft were quit. 

Trv. a Trumpet fliould fright him terribly, or the 
Hau'-boyes ? 

Cle. Out of his fenfes. The Waights of the citie haue 

165 a penfion of him, not to come neere that ward. This 

youth pradtis'd on him, one night, like the Bell-man ; and 

neuer left till hee had brought him downe to the doore, 

with a long-fword : and there left him flourifliing with 

the aire. 

170 Boy. Why, fir! hee hath chofen a ftreet to lie in, fo 

narrow at both ends, that it will receiue no coaches, nor 

carts, nor any of thefe common noifes : and therefore, we 

that loue him, deuife to bring him in fuch as we may, now 

and then, for his exercife, to breath him. Hee would grow 

175 refty elfe in his eafe. His vertue would ruft without 

adtion. I entreated a Beare-ward, one day, to come downe 

with the dogs of fome foure pariflies that way, and I thanke 

[534] him, he did ; & cryed his games vnder mafter | Morose's 

windore : till he was fent crying away, with his head made 

150 he F^ 152 marry Q. .. , but not uniformly 155 hee F.^ 

1 58 Hammer-man F^.. . 159 dwell F^... 160 vpon] 00. F^... 1717 

-tuesdayes Fi 161 quit] quiet 1692 . . . 1768 162 should] would 

H...1717 165 nere 7^1 167 he T^i 169 ayre i^i i7ohe7^i 

171 no carts 1768 172 noyses F^ 173 bring him in] om. in F^ 

1640. ..1717 175 : his vertue i'^, i640. .. 177 dogges. . . himhedid/', 

178 and cried /^ 179 windore] window 1640, not uniformly so 



SC. l] The filent Woman 17 

a moft bleeding fpe-Stacle to the multitude. And, another 180 
time, a Fencer, marching to his prize, had his drum 
moft tragically run through, for taking that ftreet in his 
way, at my requeft. 

Trv. a good wag. How do's he for the bells ? 

CLE. O, i' the Queenes time, he was wont to goe out of 1S5 
towne euery fatterday at ten a clock, or on holy-day-eues. 
But now, by reafon of the fickneffe, the perpetuitie of 
ringing has made him deuife a roome, with double walls, 
and treble feelings ; the windores clofe fhut, and calk'd : 
and there he Hues by candle-light. He turn'd away a man, 190 
laft weeke, for hauing a paire of new fliooes that creak'd. 
And this fellow waits on him, now, in tennis-court focks, or 
flippers fol'd with wooll : and they talke each to other, 
in a trunke. See, who comes here. 



A 51 I. Sce7ie II. 

Davphine, Trve-wit, Clerimont. 

HOw now ! what aile you firs ? dumbe ? 
Trv. Strooke into ftone, almoft, I am here, with tales 
o' thine vncle ! There was neuer fuch a prodigie heard of. 

Davp. I would you would once loofe this fubied:, 
my mafters, for my fake. They are fuch as you are, that 5 
haue brought mee into that predicament, I am, with him. 

Trv. How is that ? 

Davp. Mary, that he will dif-inherit me, no more. Hee 
thinks, I, and my companie are authors of all the ridiculous 
ads, and moniments are told of him. ^* 

180 most bleeding] p. 534 begins here F^ 181 marching] going F^ 

1640 . . . 1717 182 through] thorow Q 186 a clocke F^ holy day 

cues Fi 190 hee. . . candlelight F^ 193 each to other] to each 

other 1768 

True-wit] Trv-wit 7^1 layle/'i 2 stroke i^i ; struck J640 .. . 

4 Davp.] Dav. F^ through Act I. Sc. 2, 3 ; Dau. 16i0 8 He thinks . . . 

company F^^ 10 mon'ments /^i . . . ; monuments W G 



i8 77?^ Jilent Woman [act i 

Trv. S'Hd, I would be the author of more, to vexe him, 
that purpofe deferues it : it giues thee law of plaguing him. 
I'll tell thee what I would doe, I would make a falfe 
almanack ; get it printed : and then ha' him drawne out on 
15 a coronation day to the tower-yNh.zxi^, and kill him with 
the noife of the ordinance. Dif-inherit thee ! hee cannot, 
man. Art not thou next of bloud, and his fifters fonne ? 

Davp. I, but he will thruft me out of it, he vowes, and 
marry. 
20 Trv. How ! that's a more portent. Can he endure no 
noife, and will venter on a wife ? 

Cle. Yes: why, thou art a ftranger, it feemes, to his 
beft trick, yet. He has imploid a fellow this halfe yeere, 
all ouer England^ to harken him out a dumbe woman ; bee 
25 fliee of any forme, or any qualitie, fo fhee bee able to beare 
children : her filence is dowrie enough, he faies. 
Trv. But, I truft to god, he has found none. 
Cle. No, but hee has heard of one that's lodg'd i' the 
next ftreet to him, who is exceedingly foft-fpoken ; thrifty 
30 of her fpeech ; that fpends but fixe words a day. And her 
hee's about now, and fliall haue her. 
[535] Trv. Is't poflible ! who is his agent i' the bufmefTe ? 

Cle. Mary, a Barber, one Cvt-Berd : an honeft 
fellow, one that tells Davphine all here. 
35 Trv. Why, you opprefle mee with wonder ! A woman, 
and a barber, and loue no noife ! 

Cle. Yes faith. The fellow trims him filently, and has 
not the knacke with his fheeres, or his fingers : and that 
continence in a barber hee thinkes fo eminent a vertue, as 
40 it has made him chiefe of his counfell. 

II S'lid] 'Slid J640 .. . 12 thee law] the law i692 // 14 alma- 

nacke 7^1 15 tower wharfe /\ 16 he cannot i^i 17 blood i^i 

20 more portent] mere potent M 22 Yes, why thou art a stranger, 

it seemes, to his best tricke, yet. F^ 23 yeare F^ 24 hearken Fy 

25 quallitie, so she be F^ 26 sayes F^ 29 soft spoken F^ 

30 six F^ 33 one Cvt-berd] 07n. F^ 1640 . . . 1717 36 noyse F^ 

37 trimes F^ 39 continence] continency 1692 . . . 1717 



isc. ii] The Jllent Woman 19 

Trv. Is the barber to be feene ? or the wench ? 

CLE. Yes, that they are. 

Trv. I pray thee, Davphine, let's goe thether. 

Davp. I haue fome bufineffe now : I cannot i' faith. 

Trv. You fhall haue no bufinelTe fliall make you negled 45 
this, fir, wee'U make her talke, beleeue it ; or if fliee will 
not, wee can giue out, at leaft fo much as fliall interrupt the 
treatie : wee will breake it. Thou art bound in confcience, 
when hee fufpeds thee without caufe, to torment him. 

Davp, Not I, by any meanes. I'll giue no fuffrage 5° 
to't. He fliall neuer ha' that plea againfl: me, that 
I oppos'd the leaft phantTie of his. Let it lie vpon my 
ftarres to be guiltie, I'll be innocent. 

Trv. Yes, and be poore, and beg ; doe, innocent : 
when fome groome of his has got him an heire, or this 55 
barber, if hee himfelfe cannot. Innocent ! I pray thee, 
Ned, where lyes fliee ? let him be innocent, flill. 

CLE. Why, right ouer againfl the barbers ; in the houfe, 
where fir lOHN Daw lyes. 

Trv. You doe not meane to confound me ! 60 

CLE. Why ? 

Trv. Do's he, that would marry her^ know fo much ? 

Cle. I cannot tell. 

Trv. 'Twere inough of imputation to her, with him. 

CLE. Why ? 65 

Trv. The onely talking fir i' th' towne ! Iack Daw ! 
And he teach her not to fpeake — God b'w'you. I haue 
fome bufinefTe too. 

Cle. Will you not goe thether then ? 

Trv. Not with the danger to meet Daw, for mine eares. 70 

Cle. Why ? I thought you two had beene vpon very 
good termes. 

48 treaty /\ 51 Hee F^ 52 lye F^ 56 He /^j 57 lies 

she, Innocent F-^ 59 lies F^^ 60 Yon doe not] om. doe 1622 H 

62 Do's] dos F^ ; does 1622 ... 66 i' th' towne ! . . . hee i^i 67 God 
be wi' you (7, uniformly 



20 The filent Woman [act I 

Trv. Yes, of keeping diftance. 
Cle. They fay he is a very good fcholler. 
75 Trv, I, and hee fayes it firft. A poxe on him, a fellow 
that pretends onely to learning, buyes titles, and nothing 
else of bookes in him. 

Cle. The world reports him to be very learned. 
Trv. I am forry, the world fliould fo confpire to 
80 belie him. 

Cle. Good faith, I haue heard very good things come 
from him. 

Trv. You may. There's none fo defperately ignorant 
[536] to denie that : | would they were his owne. God b'w'you 
85 gentlemen. 

Cle. This is very abrupt ! 

A a I. Scene III. 
Davphine, Clerimont, Boy. 

COme, you are a ftrange open man, to tell euery thing, 
thus. 
Cle. Why, beleeue it Davphine, Trve-WIT's a very 
honeft fellow. 
5 Davp. I thinke no other : but this franke nature of his 
is not for fecrets. 

Cle. Nay, then, you are miftaken DAVPHINE : I know 
where he has beene well trufted, and difcharg'd the truft 
very truely, and heartily. 
10 Davp. I contend not, Ned, but, with the fewer a bufineffe 
is carried, it is euer the fafer. Now we are alone, if you'll 
goe thether, I am for you. 

Cle. When were you there ? 

Davp. Laft night : and fuch a decanter on of fport fallen 
15 out ! BOCCACE neuer thought of the like. Daw do's noth- 
ing but court her ; and the wrong way. Hee would lie with 

79 sory . . . belye jF, 85 gentleman F^ 

8 hee F^ 15 do's] dos i^i ; does 1680 . .. 



sc. in] The Jilent Woman 21 

her, and praifes her modeftie ; defires that fhee would talke, 
and bee free, and commends her filence in verfes : which 
hee reades, and fweares, are the beft that euer man made. 
Then railes at his fortunes, ftamps, and mutines, why he is 20 
not made a counfellor, and call'd to affaires of ftate. 

Cle. I pray thee let's goe. I would faine partake this. 
Some water, Boy. 

Davp. Wee are inuited to dinner together, he and I, by 
one that came thether to him, fir La-Foole. 25 

Cle. O, that's a precious mannikin ! 

Davp. Doe you know him ? 

Cle. I, and he will know you too, if ere he faw you but 
once, though you fliould meet him at church in the midft of 
praiers. Hee is one of the Braueries^ though he be none 30 
o' the Wits. He will falute a ludge vpon the bench, 
and a Bifliop in the pulpit, a Lawyer when hee is pleading 
at the barre, and a Lady when fliee is dauncing in a mafque, 
and put her out. He do's giue playes, and fuppers, and 
inuites his guefts to 'hem, aloud, out of his windore, as they 35 
ride by in coaches. He has a lodging in the Strand for 
the purpofe. Or to watch when ladies are gone to the 
China houfes., or the Exchange, that hee may meet 'hem 
by chance, and giue 'hem prefents, fome two or three 
hundred pounds-worth of toyes, to be laught at. He is \o 
neuer without a fpare banquet, or fweet-meats in his 
chamber, for their women to alight at, and come vp to, for 
a bait. 

Davp. Excellent ! He was a fine youth last night, but 
now he is much finer ! what is his chriften-name ? I ha' 45 
forgot. 



17 prayses F.^ 20 hee F^ 32 lets goe F^ 24, 28, 44 hee Fy 

26 mannikin. F^ 30 prayers F^ 30, 32 He F^ 31 iudge P\ 

32 bishop F^ lawyer F-^ 33 lady F^^ she F^ 35 guestes Fy 

36 strand F^ 37 purpose : or to F^ 38 Exchange F^ meete F^ 

40 pounds worth Fy 42 for their women] om. for Fx 1640 . . . 171? 

43 bayt F^ 45 christen name F^ 1640 . . . 1717 ; Christian J-F... 



22 The filent Woman [act I 

Cle. Sir Amorovs La-Foole. 
[537] Boy. The gentleman is here below, that ownes that 
name. 
50 Cle. Hart, hee's come, to inuite me to dinner, I hold 
my life. 

Davp. Like enough : pray thee, let's ha' him vp. 
Cle. Boy, marfhall him. 
Boy. With a truncheon, fir ? 
55 Cle. Away, I befeech you. Fie make him tell vs his 
pedegree, now ; and what meat he has to dinner ; and, 
who are his guefts ; and, the whole courfe of his fortunes : 
with a breath. 

A a I. Scene I III. 
La-Foole, Clerimont, Davphine. 

S'Aue, deare fir Davphine, honor'd mafirer Clerimont. 
Cle. Sir Amorovs ! you haue very much honefted 
my lodging, with your prefence. 

La-f. Good faith, it is a fine lodging ! almoft, as 
5 delicate a lodging, as mine. 
Cle. Not fo, fir. 

La-F. Excufe me, fir, if it were i' the Strand, I affure 
you. I am come, mafter Clerimont, to entreat you wait 
vpon two or three ladies, to dinner, to day. 
10 Cle. How, fir! wait vpon 'hem? did you euer fee me 
carry diflies ? 

La-F. No, fir, difpence with me ; I meant, to beare 
'hem companie. 

Cle. O, that I will, fir. The doubtfulnefife o' your 
15 phrafe, beleeue it, fir, would breed you a quarrell, once an 
houre, with the terrible boyes, if you fliould but keepe 'hem 
fellowfhip a day. 

47 Sir Amorovs] Sis Amorous F^ ; Sir Amarons H 48, 54 Boy] 

Page G 48 The gentleman is here that owes that name F^ 1640 ; The 

gentleman is here that owns that name 1692 . . . 1717 56 hee F^ 57 guestes F^ 

7 Strand Fi 8 wait] to wait G 13 company F^ 



sc. iiii] The Jilent Woman 23 

La-f. It fliould be extremely againft my will, fir, if 
I contefted with any man. 

Cle. I beleeue it, fir ; where hold you your feaft ? 20 

La-f. At Tom Otters, fir. 

Davp. Tom Otter ? what's he ? 

La-f. Captaine Otter, fir; he is a kind of gamfter: 
but he has had command, both by fea, and by land. 

Davp. O, then he is animal amphibium ? 25 

La-f. I, fir: his wife was the rich 6"/^^««- woman, that 
the courtiers vifited fo often, that gaue the rare entertain- 
ment. She commands all at home. 

Cle. Then, fhee is Captaine Otter ? 

La-f. You fay very well, fir ; flie is my kinf-woman, 30 
a La-Foole by the mother fide, and will inuite, any great 
ladies, for my fake. 

Davp. Not of the La-Fooles of EJfex ? 

La-f. No, fir, the La-Fooles of London. 

Cle. Now, h'is in. 3^ 

La-f. They all come out of our houfe, the La-Fooles 
o' the north, the La-Fooles of the weft, the La-FoOLES of 
the eaft, and fouth — we | are as ancient a family, as any [538] 
is in Europe — but I my felfe am defcended lineally of the 
french La-Fooles — and, wee doe beare for our coate ^o 
Yellow, or Or, checker'd Azure, and Gules, and fome three 
or foure colours more, which is a very noted coate, and has, 
fome-times, beene folemnely worne by diuers nobilitie of 
our houfe — but let that goe, antiquitie is not refpeded 
now — I had a brace of fat Does fent me, gentlemen, & halfe 45 
a dofen of phefants, a dofen or two of godwits, and fome 
other fowle, which I would haue eaten, while they are 
good, and in good company — there will be a great lady, or 
two, my lady HavGHTY, my lady Centavre, miftris DOL 

18 extreamely /"i 23 hee /"j 27 the] her i76S entertainement 

Fx 30 shee is my kinswoman Fy 35 h'isj hee's IMO ; he's H ... 39 my self 
/^i 40 French F^ we do beare our coat yellow F^ ; ovi. for l&iO . . . 1717 

42 coulors Fi 43 sometimes F^ nobility Fy 44 antiquity Fy 45 

does sent mee, gentlemen, and halfe F^ 47 fonle F^ 48 great] grat Q 



24 The filent Woman 

5° Mavis — and they come a' purpofe, to fee the filent gentle- 
woman, mirtris EPICOENE, that honefl fir lOHN Daw has 
promis'd to bring thether — and then, miftris Trvsty, my 
ladies woman, will be there too, and this honorable Knight, 
fir Davphine, with your felfe, mafter Clerimont — and 

55 wee'U bee very merry, and haue fidlers, and daunce — 
I haue beene a mad wag, in my time, and haue spent fome 
crownes fince I was a page in court, to my lord LOFTY, and 
after, my ladies gentleman-vflier, who got mee knighted in 
Ireland^ fince it pleas'd my elder brother to die — I had 

6o as faire a gold ierkin on that day, as any was worne in 
the Iland-voyzgQ, or at Calls, none difprais'd, and I came 
ouer in it hither, fhow'd my fislfe to my friends, in court, 
and after went downe to my tenants, in the countrey, 
and furuai'd my lands, let new leafes, tooke their money, 

65 fpent it in the eye o' the land here, vpon ladies — and 
now I can take vp at my pleafure. 
Davp. Can you take vp ladies, fir ? 
Cle. O, let him breath, he has not recouer'd. 
Davp. Would I were your halfe, in that commoditie — 

70 La-f. No, fir, excufe mee : I meant money, which can 
take vp any thing. I haue another gueft, or two, to inuite, 
and fay as much to, gentlemen. I'll take my leaue 
abruptly, in hope you will not faile — Your feruant. 

Davp. Wee will not faile you, fir precious La-FOOLE ; 

75 but fliee fliall, that your ladies come to fee : if I haue 
credit, afore fir Daw. 

Cle. Did you euer heare fuch a wind-fucker, as this ? 
Davp. Or, fuch a rooke, as the other ! that will betray 
his miftris, to be feene. Come, 'tis time, we preuented it. 

80 Cle. Goe. 

50 a' purpose] o' purpose W G 53 bee F-^ knight F^ 55 be F^ 

56 & haue spent F^ 58 gentleman vsher F^ me Fy 60 Ierkin F^ 

any was worne] any worn G M 61 Hand /^ ; Island//"... Caliz\ 

Cadiz H ... 69 commodity F^ 70 La-F.] Cle. F^ 1640 . . . 1717 

72 Gentlemen j'^i 74 We /'j 77 wind-sucker /f. . . 79 mistris] 

master IMO . . . 1717 Come, tis Fi 



The Jilent Woman 25 

^& II. Scene I. 

Morose, Mvte. 

CAnnot I, yet, find out a more compendious method, then 
by this trunke, to faue my feruants the labour of 
fpeech, and mine eares, the difcord of founds ? Let mee fee : 
all difcourfes, but mine owne, afflicSl mee, they feeme harfli, 
impertinent, and irkfome. Is it not | pofTible, that thou 5 [539] 
Ihould'fl: anfwere me, by fignes, and, I apprehend thee, 
fellow ? fpeake not, though I queftion you. You haue 
taken the ring, off from the ftreet dore, as I bad you? 
anfwere me not, by fpeech, but by filence ; vnleflTe, it be 

otherwife ( ) very good. And, you haue faftened on At the 

a thicke quilt, or flock-bed, on the out-fide of the ^oxo. \ jmnj^^'' 
that if they knocke with their daggers, or with bricke-bats, /^^'^■^^ 
they can make no noife ? but with your leg, your anfwere, or fignes. 

vnlefle it be otherwife ( ) very good. This is not, onely, 

fit modeftie in a feruant, but good ftate, and difcretion in 15 
a mafter. And you haue beene with CvTBERD, the barber, 

to haue him come to me ? ( ) good. And, he will come 

prefently ? anfwere me not but with your leg, vnlefTe it be 
otherwife : if it be otherwife, fhake your head, or flirug 

( ) fo. Your Italian^ and Spaniard, are wife in thefe ! 20 

and it is a frugall, and comely grauitie. How long will it 
bee, ere Cvtberd come ? flay, if an houre, hold vp your 
whole hand ; if halfe an houre, two fingers ; if a quarter, 

one ; ( ) good : halfe a quarter ? 'tis well. And haue you 

giuen him a key, to come in without knocking? ( )good. 25 

And, is the lock oild, and the hinges, to day ? ( ) good. 

Act II. Scene I. includes Sc. I and II. A Rootn in Morose's House. G 
I findei^i 4 me, . . . harshe ^1 6 answer /^^ 12 brickbats i'i 

13 legge F^ your answere] you answer lUO . . . 1717 14 onely, fit] only 

a fit A/" 16 been F^ 18 not] om. 1768 legge, unless it bee otherwise /^i 
19 bee /^i 20 So 7^1 21 it is, a frugall and comely grauity. /^ 

26 oyld Fi 

C 



26 The Jilent Woman [act ii 

And the quilting of the ftaires no where worne out, and 

bare? ( ) very good. I fee, by much dodrine, and 

impulfion, it may be effeded : ftand by. The Turke, 

3° in this diuine difcipline, is admirable, exceeding all the 

potentates of the earth ; ftill waited on by mutes ; and all 

his commands fo executed ; yea, euen in the warre (as 

I haue heard) and in his marches, moft of his charges, and 

diredlions, giuen by ftgnes, and with filence : an exquifite 

35 art ! and I am heartily afliam'd, and angrie often-times, 

that the Princes of Chrijlendome, fhould fufifer a Barbarian, 

to tranfcend 'hem in fo high a point of felicitie. I will 

Onewindes pradife it, hereafter. How now? oh ! oh ! what villaine ? 

without, what prodigie of mankind is that ? looke. Oh ! cut his 

Againe. throat ; cut his throat : what murderer hell-hound deuill 

can this be ? 

MvT. It is a poft from the court — 
MOR. Out rogue, and muft thou blow thy home, too ? 
MvT. Alas, it is a poft from the court, fir, that fayes, 
45 hee muft fpeake with you, paine of death — 
MOR. Paine of thy life, be filent. 



A a II. Scene II. 

Trve-wit, Morose, Cvtberd. 

BY your leaue, fir (I am a ftranger here) is your name, 
mafter MoROSE ? is your name, mafter MoROSE ? 
fillies ! Pythagoreans all ! this is ftrange ! What fay you, fir, 
nothing? Has Harpocrates beene here, with his club, 
5 among you ? well fir, I will beleeue you to bee the man, at 
this time : I will venter vpon you, fir. Your friends at 
court commend 'hem to you, fir — 

33 chardges F^ 35 oftentimes F-^ 36 Barbarian F^ 37 Felicity F■^ 
39 mankinde F-^ 40 deuilll diuell F^ ; divell IQiO ; divel m^2 . . . 1717 

44 Alasse, F^ 45 speake with you] om. with F^ 1640 ... 46 Payne Fi 

I sir, I am a stranger here": F^ 1640 . . . ; sir ; — I am a stranger here :— G 
4 heere F^ 5 bee F^ 



sc ii] The Jilent Woman 27 

(MOR. O men! 6 manners! was there euer fuch an [540] 
impudence ?) 

Trv. And are extremely foUicitous for you, fir. 10 

MOR. Whofe knaue are you ! 

Trv. Mine owne knaue, and your compere, fir. 

MoR. Fetch me my fword — 

Trv. You fhall tafte the one halfe of my dagger, if you 
do (groome) and you, the other, if you fl:irre, fir : be patient, 15 
I charge you, in the kings name, and heare mee without 
infurredion. They fay, you are to marry ? to marry ! doe 
you marke, fir ? 

MOR. How then, rude companion ! 

Trv. Mary, your friends doe wonder, fir, the Thames 20 
being so neere, wherein you may drowne fo handfomely ; 
or Zwz</^;^-bridge, at a low fall, with a fine leape, to hurry 
you downe the ftreame ; or, fuch a delicate fl:eeple, i' the 
towne, as Bow, to vault from ; or, a brauer height, as 
Pauls, or, if you affedted to doe it neerer home, and 25 
a fliorter way, an excellent garret windore, into the flrreet ; 
or, a beame, in the faid garret, with this halter ; which HejJuwes 
they haue fent, and defire, that you would fooner commit halter, 
your graue head to this knot, then to the wed-lock nooze ; 
or, take a little fublimate, and goe out of the world, like 3° 
a rat ; or a flie (as one faid) with a ftraw i' your arfe : any 
way, rather, then to follow this goblin matrimony. Alas 
fir, doe you euer thinke to find a chaile wife, in thefe times ? 
now ? when there are fo many mafques, plaies, puritane 
preachings, mad-folkes, and other ftrange fights to be feene 35 
daily, priuate and publique ? if you had liu'd in king 
Etheldred's time, fir, or EDWARD the ConfefTors, you 
might, perhaps, haue found in fome cold countrey-hamlet, 

10 Trv. And are . . .] p. 540 begins here F-^ 16 me F^ 20 Marry F^ 

25 nearer /^i 26 vtmdiO'^ F^^, but not uniformly 27 halter, t^j 

29 wedlocke F^ 31 or, a flye F^ () om. G 32 to follow] o?n. to W G 
Alasse, . . . finde F^ 35 preachings] parlee's F^ ; Parlees IdiO ... W 

madfolkes, ... to bee seene dayly, F^ 37 time, sir,] om. sir F^ Confessors] 
confessor W G 38 found] found one IV G countrey hamlet F^ 

C 3 



28 The ftlent Woman [act ii 

then, a dull froffie wench, would haue beene contented with 
40 one man : now, they will as foone be pleas'd with one leg, 
or one eye. I'll tell you, fir, the monftrous hazards you 
fliall runne with a wife. 

MOR. Good fir ! haue I euer cofen'd any friends of 
yours of their land ? bought their pofTefiSons ? taken forfeit 
45 of their morgage ? begg'd a reuerfion from 'hem ? baftarded 
their ifiTue ? what haue I done, that may deferue this ? 

Trv. Nothing, fir, that I know, but your itch of 
marriage. 

MOR. Why ? if I had made an affaffinate vpon your 
50 father ; vitiated your mother ; rauiflied your fifters — 

Trv. I would kill you, fir, I would kill you, if you 
had. 

MOR. Why? you doe more in this, fir: It were 
a vengeance centuple, for all facinorous a6ts, that could be 
65 nam'd, to doe that you doe — 

Trv. Alas, fir, I am but a meflenger : I but tell you, 

what you muft heare. It feemes, your friends are carefull 

after your foules health, fir, and would haue you know the 

danger (but you may doe your pleafure, for all them, 

60 I perfwade not, fir) If, after you are married, your wife 

doe run away with a vaulter, or the Frenchman that walkes 

vpon ropes, or him that daunces the iig, or a fencer for his 

skill at his weapon, why it is not their fault ; they haue 

[541] difcharged their confciences : when you know | what may 

65 happen. Nay, fufifer valiently, fir, for I muft tell you, all 

the perills that you are obnoxious too. If fhee be faire, 

yong, and vegetous, no fweet meats euer drew more flies ; 

all the yellow doublets, and great rofes i' the towne will 

bee there. If foule, and crooked, fliee'll bee with them, 

70 and buy thofe doublets, and rofes, fir. If rich, and that 

you marry her dowry, not her ; fliee'll raigne in your houfe, 

as imperious as a widow. If noble, all her kindred will be 

43 Good sir ; haue I euer cosen'd, any friends of yours, F^ 45 beg'd F^ 

56 Alasse F^ 60 if, after F^ 



sc. ii] The filent Woman 29 

your tyrannes. If fruitfull, as proud as May, and humorous 
as April', flie muft haue her dodrors, her midwiues, her 
nurfes, her longings euery houre : though it be for the 75 
deareft morfell of man. If learned, there was neuer fuch 
a parrat ; all your patrimony will be too little for the guefts, 
that muft be inuited, to heare her fpeake Latine and 
Greeke : and you muft lie with her in thofe languages too, 
if you will pleafe her. If precife, you muft feaft all the 80 
filenc'd brethern, once in three dales ; falute the fifters ; 
entertaine the whole family, or wood of 'hem ; and heare 
long-winded exercifes, fingings, and catechifings, which you 
are not giuen to, and yet muft giue for : to pleafe the 
zealous matron your wife, who, for the holy caufe, will 85 
cofen you, ouer and aboue. You beginne to fweat, fir? 
but this is not halfe, i' faith : you may do your pleafure 
notwithftanding, as I faid before, I come not to perfwade 
you. Vpon my faith, mafter feruingman, if you doe ftirre, Tke Mute 

T Ml L I. is ftealin^ 

I Will beat you. „^^_ 

MOR. O, what is my finne ? what is my finne ? 

Trv. Then, if you loue your wife, or rather, dote on 
her, fir : 6, how fliee'll torture you ! and take pleafure i' 
your torments ! you fliall lye with her but when fhe lifts ; 
file will not hurt her beauty, her complexion ; or it muft be 95 
for that iewell, or that pearle, when flie do's ; euery halfe 
houres pleafure muft be bought anew : and with the fame 
paine, and charge, you woo'd her at firft. Then, you muft 
keepe what feruants Ihee pleafe ; what company fliee will ; 
that friend muft not vifit you without her licence ; and him 100 
fliee loues moft fliee will feeme to hate eagerlieft, to decline 
your ieloufie ; or, faigne to bee ielous of you firft ; and for 
that caufe goe Hue with her fhe-friend, or cofen at the 
colledge, that can inftrudt her in all the myfteries, of 
writing letters, corrupting feruants, taming fpies ; where 105 
fhee muft haue that rich goune for fuch a great day ; a new 
one for the next ; a richer for the third ; bee feru'd in 

73 tyrannes] Tyrans 1QQ2; tyrants H ... 



30 77?^ Jllent Woman [act ii 

filuer ; haue the chamber fill'd with a fucceflion of groomes, 
footmen, vfhers, and other meflengers ; befides embroy- 

iio derers, iewellers, tyre- women, fempfters, fether-men, perfu- 
mers ; while fliee feeles not how the land drops away ; nor 
the acres melt ; nor forfees the change, when the mercer 
has your woods for her veluets ; neuer weighes what her 
pride cofls, fir : fo fliee may kifle a page, or a fmoth chinne, 

115 that has the defpaire of a beard ; bee a ftatef-woman, know 
all the newes, what was done at Salisbury, what at the 
Bath, what at court, what in progrefTe ; or, fo fliee may 
cenfure poets, and authors, and ftiles, and compare 'hem, 
Daniel with Spenser, Ionson with the tother youth, 

1 20 and fo foorth ; or, be thought cunning in controuerlies, or 

the very knots of diuinitie ; and haue, often in her mouth, 

[5421 the flate of | the queftion : and then skip to the Mathema- 

tiques, and demonftration and anfwere, in religion to one ; 

in flate, to another, in baud'ry to a third. 

125 MOR. 0,6! 

Trv. All this is very true, fir. And then her going in 
difguife to that coniurer, and this cunning woman : where 
the firft queftion is, how foone you fhall die ? next, if her 
prefent feruant loue her ? next that, if fhe fhall haue a new 

130 feruant? and how many ? which of her family would make 
the bell baud, male, or female? what precedence flie fhall 
haue by her next match ? and fets downe the anfwers, and 
beleeues 'hem aboue the fcriptures. Nay, perhaps flie'll 
ftudy the art. 

135 MoR. Gentle fir, ha' you done? ha' you had your 
pleafure o' me? I'll thinke of thefe things. 

Trv. Yes fir : and then comes reeking home of vapor 
and fweat, with going afoot, and lies in, a moneth, of a new 
face, all oyle, and birdlime ; and rifes in afles milke, and is 

140 clens'd with a new ficcns : god b'w'you, fir. One thing 

III while] whilst IV G 113 has] seizes iTSS 119 Ionson] 

lohnson Q 1640 . . . 1717 129 next that, if] next that if 1692 ; Next, that 

if H; next, if W 



sc. ii] The Ji lent Woman 31 

more (which I had almoft forgot.) This too, with whom 
you are to marry, may haue made a conuayance of her 
virginity aforehand, as your wife widdowes doe of their 
ftates, before they marry, in truft to fome friend, fir : who 
can tell ? or if fhe haue not done it yet, Ihe may doe, vpon 145 
the wedding day, or the night before, and antidate you 
cuckold. The Hke has beene heard of, in nature. 'Tis no 
deuis'd impoffible thing, fir. God b'w'you : I'll be bold 
to leaue this rope with you, fir, for a remembrance. Fare- 
well MVTE. - 150 

MOR. Come, ha' me to my chamber : but firft fhut the 
dore. O, fliut the dore, fhut the dore : Is he come The home 
againe? ''^''''''^ 

CVT. 'Tis I, fir, your barber. 

MoR. O, CvTBERD, CvTBERD, CvTBERD 1 here has bin 155 
a cut-throate with me : helpe me in to my bed, and giue 
me phyficke with thy counfell. 



^a II. Scene III. 

Daw, Clerimont, Davphine, Epicoene. 

NAy, and flie will, let her refufe, at her owne charges : 'tis 
nothing to me, gentlemen. But flie will not bee 
inuited to the like feafts, or guefts, euery day. 

CLE. O, by no meanes, fhee may not refufe — to ftay They 
at home, if you loue your reputation : 'Slight, you are f^£"^ ' 
inuited thither o' purpofe to bee feene, and laught slX. P^^i^^^ely. 
by the lady of the colledge, and her fliadowes. This 
trumpeter hath proclaim'd you. 

Davp. You fhall not goe ; let him be laught at in your 
fteade, for not bringing you : and put him to his extern- 10 

141 ( ) otn. 147 beene] bin Q 

Act II. Scene III.] Sc. Ill and IV. A Room in sir John 

Daw's House. G 



32 The filent Woman [act ii 

porall faculty of fooling, and talking loud to fatisfie the 
company. 

CLE. He will fufped vs, talke aloud. * Pray ' miftris 
[543] EpicOENE, let's fee [ your verfes ; we haue fir lOHN Daw'S 
isleaue: doe not conceale your feruants merit, and your 
owne glories. 

Epi. They'll proue my feruants glories, if you haue 
his leaue fo foone. 

Davp. His vaine glories, lady ! 
20 Daw. Shew 'hem, fliew 'hem, miftris, I dare owne 'hem. 
Epi. ludge you, what glories ? 

Daw. Nay, I'll read 'hem, my felfe, too: an author 
muft recite his owne workes. It is a madrigall of modeftie. 

Modeji, and faire, for faire and good are neere 
25 Neighbours, how ere. — 

Davp. Very good. 
CLE. I, Is't not? 
Daw. No noble vertue euer was alone. 

But two in one, 
30 Davp. Excellent ! 

Cle. That againe, I pray' fir lOHN. 
Davp. It has fome thing in 't like rare wit, and fenfe, 
Cle. Peace. 

Daw. No noble vertue euer was alone, 
35 But two in one. 

Then, when I praife fweet modeftie, I praife 

Bright beauties raies : 
And hauing praisd both beauty and modeftee, 
I haue praisd thee. 
40 Davp. Admirable ! 

Cle. How it chimes, and cries tinke i' the clofe, 
diuinely ! 
Davp. I, 'tis Seneca. 
Cle. No, I thinke 'tis Plvtarch. 
45 Daw. The dor on Plvtarch, and Seneca, I hate it : 

13 ' Pray'] 'Pray 1&^2 H 23 workes] work Q madrigall F.^ 



sc. Ill] The Jilent Woman 33 

they are mine owne imaginations, by that h'ght. I wonder 
thofe fellowes haue fuch credit with gentlemen ! 

Cle. They are very graue authors. 

Daw. Graue afTes ! meere EJfaifis ! a few loofe fentences, 
and that 's all. A man would talke fo, his whole age, I doe 50 
vtter as good things euery houre, if they were colleded, 
and obferu'd, as either of 'hem. 

Davp. Indeede ! fir lOHN ? 

Cle. Hee mull needs, Huing among the Wits, and 
Brmieries too. 55 

Davp. I, and being prefident of 'hem, as he is. 

Daw. There's ARISTOTLE, a mere common place- 
fellow ; Plato, a difcourfer ; Thvcidides, and Livie, 
tedious and drie ; Tacitvs, an entire knot : fom.etimes 
worth the vntying, very feldome. 60 

Cle. What doe you think of the Poets, fir lOHN ? 

Daw. Not worthy to be nam'd for authors. HOMER, 
an old tedious prolixe afife, talkes of curriers, and chines of 
beefe. Virgil, of dunging of land, and bees. HORACE, 
of I know not what. 65 

Cle. I thinke so. 

Daw. And fo Pindarvs, Lycophron, Anacreon, [544] 
Catvllvs, Seneca, the tragoedian, LvcAN, Propertivs, 
TiBVLLVs, Martial, Ivvenal, Avsonivs, Stativs, 
Politian, Valerivs Flaccvs, and the rest — 7° 

Cle. What a facke full of their names he has got ! 

Davp. And how he poures 'hem out ! POLITIAN, with 
Valerivs Flaccvs ! 

Cle. Was not the charadrer right, of him ? 

Davp. As could be made, i' faith. 75 

Daw. And Persivs, a crabbed cockefcombe, not to be 
endur'd. 

Davp. Why? whom do you account for authors, fir 
lOHN Daw ? 

57 There is Aristotle F^ common place-fellow] common-place fellow 

miO . . . 



34 The filent Woman [act ii 

80 Daw. Syntagma Itu'is cuiilis, Corpus Juris ciuilis, 
Corpus Juris Canonici, the King of Spaines bible. 

Davp. Is the King of Spaines bible an author ? 

CLE. Yes, and Syntagma. 

Davp. What was that Syntagma, fir ? 
85 Daw. a ciuill lawer, a Spaniard. 

Davp. Sure, Corp7is was a Dutch-mdj\. 

Cle. I, both the Corpujfes, I knew 'hem : they were 
very corpulent authors. 

Daw. And, then there's Vatablvs, Pomponativs, 
90 Symancha, the other are not to be receiu'd, within the 
thought of a fcholler. 

Davp. Fore god, you haue a fimple learn'd feruant, 
lady, in titles. 

Cle. I wonder that hee is not called to the helme, and 
95 made a councellor ! 

Davp. He is one extraordinary. 

Cle. Nay, but in ordinarie ! to fay truth, the Hate 
wants fuch. 

Davp. Why, that will follow. 
100 Cle. I mufe, a miftris can be fo filent to the dotes 
of fuch a feruant. 

Daw. 'Tis her vertue, fir. I haue written fomewhat of 
her filence too. 

Davp. In verfe, fir lOHN ? 
105 Cle. What elfe ? 

Davp. Why ? how can you iuftifie your owne being of 
a Poet, that fo flight all the old Poets ? 

Daw. Why? euery man, that writes in verfe, is not 
a Poet ; you haue of the Wits, that write verfes, and yet 
no are no Poets: they are Poets that Hue by it, the poore 
fellowes that Hue by it. 

Davp. Why? would not you Hue by your verfes, fir 
John. 

Cle. No, 'twere pittie he fhould. A knight Hue by 

85 lawer] lawier Q ; lawyer l%iO . . . 



sc. Ill] The filent Woman 35 

his verfes? he did not make 'hem to that ende, I 115 
hope. 

Davp. And yet the noble Sidney Hues by his, and the 
noble family not afham'd. 

CLE, I, he profeft himfelfe ; but fir lOHN Daw has 
more caution : hee'll not hinder his owne rifing i' the ftate 120 
fo much ! doe you thinke hee will ? Your verfes, good fir 
lOHN, and no poems. 

Daw. Silence in tvoman, is like fpeech in man^ 

Deny 't who can. 
Dav. Not I, beleeue it : your reafon, fir. 125 [545] 

Daw. Nor, i'ft a tale, 

That female vice Jhoiild be a vertne male, 
Or mafctdine vice, a female vertne be : 
You Jl:>all it fee 

Protid with increafe, 130 

/ know to fpeake, and Jf^ee to hold her peace. 
Do you conceiue me, gentlemen ? 

Dav. No faith, how meane you with increafe, fir lOHN ? 
Daw. Why, with increafe is, when I court her for the 
comon caufe of mankind ; and flie fays nothing, but 135 
confentire vidctur : and in time is grauida. 

Davp. Then, this is a ballad of procreation ? 

Cle. a madi'igall of procreation, you miftake. 

Epi. 'Pray giue me my verfes againe, feruant. 

Daw. If you you'll aske 'hem aloud, you flial. 140 

Cle. See, here 's Trve-wit againe ! 

122 and no poems] are no poems 1G40 . . . 1717 1 26 Dav.] Daw 1640 . . . 

138 proceation /^] procreation Q . . . 140 you you'll] you'le 1640 ; 

you'll //. . . 141 Trve-wit] Trv-wit Q, uniformly after this reference 



36 The filent Woman [act 11 



Aa II. Scene IIII. 

Clerimont, Trve-wit, Davphine, Cvtberd, 
Daw, Epicoene. 
T T'\ TY{er& haft thou beene, in the name of madnefle ! 
V V thus accoutred with thy home? 
Trv. Where the found of it might haue pierc'd your 
fenfeSj with gladnes, had you beene in eare-reach of it. 
5 Davphine, fall downe and worfhip me : I haue forbid the 
banes, lad. I haue been with thy vertuous vncle, and haue 
broke the match. 

Davp. You ha' not, I hope. 

Trv. Yes faith ; and thou fhouldft hope otherwife, 

10 I fhould repent me : this home got me entrance, kifle it. 

I had no other way to get in, but by faining to be a poft ; 

but when I got in once, I prou'd none, but rather the 

contrary, turn'd him into a poft, or a ftone, or what is 

ftiffer, with thundring into him the incommodities of a wife, 

IS and the miferies of marriage. If euer GORGON were feene 

in the fhape of a woman, hee hath feene her in my 

defcription. I haue put him off o' that fent, for euer. 

Why doe you not applaud, and adore me, firs ? why ftand 

you mute ? Are you ftupid ? you are not worthy o' 

20 the benefit. 

Davp. Did not I tell you ? mifchiefe ! — 
Cle. I would you had plac'd this benefit fomewhere 
elfe. 
Trv. Why so ? 
'? Cle. Slight, you haue done the moft inconfiderate, rafh, 
weake thing, that euer man did to his friend. 

Davp. Friend ! if the moft malicious enemy I haue, 
[546] had ftudied to | infli6t an iniury vpon me, it could not bee 
a greater. 

18 wby F'] why 1640. . . 25, 34 Slight] 'Slight 1692 . . . 



SC. iiii] The Jilent Woman 37 

Trv. Wherein ? for gods-fake ! Gent : come to your 30 
felues againe. 

Davp. But I prefag'd thus much afore, to you. 

Cle. Would my lips had beene foldred, when I fpak 
on 't. SHght, what mou'd you to be thus impertinent ? 

Trv. My mafters, doe not put on this ftrange face 35 
to pay my courtefie : off with this vifor. Haue good 
turnes done you, and thanke 'hem this way? 

Davp. Fore heau'n, you haue vndone me. That, which 
I haue plotted for, and beene maturing now thefe foure 
moneths, you haue blafted in a minute : now I am loft^ 40 
I may fpeake. This gentlewoman was lodg'd here by me 
o' purpofe, and, to be put vpon my vncle, hath profeft this 
obftinate filence for my fake, being my entire friend ; and 
one, that for the requitall of fuch a fortune, as to marry him, 
would haue made mee very ample conditions : where now, 45 
all my hopes are vtterly mifcaried by this vnlucky accident. 

Cle. Thus 'tis, when a man will be ignorantly officious ; 
doe feruices, and not know his why : I wonder what 
curteous itch pofiefs'd you! you neuer did abfurder part 
i' your life, nor a greater trefpafle to friendfliip, to humanity. 50 

Davp. Faith, you may forgiue it, beft : 'twas your caufe 
principally. 

Cle. I know it, would it had not. 

Davp. How now CvTBERD ? what newes ? 

CVT. The beft, the happieft that euer was, fir. There 55 
has beene a mad gentleman with your vncle, this morning 
(I thinke this be the gentleman) that has almoft talk'd him 
out of his wits, with threatning him from marriage — 

Davp. On, I pray thee. 

CvT. And your vnkle, fir, hee thinkes 'twas done 60 
by your procurement ; therefore he will fee the party, 
you wot of, prefently: and if he like her, he fayes, and 

30 Gent :] Gentleman 1&Q2 ... 50 to humanity] or humanity IMO . . . 

53 Dle. F^, Cle. Q... 54 Cavp. ^] Dau. miO ... 57 —I think this 
be the gentleman — G 



38 The Jilent Woman [act ii 

that fhe be so inclining to dombe, as I haue told him, 
he fweares hee will marry her, to day, inftantly, and not 
65 deferre it a minute longer. 

Davp. Excellent ! beyond our expediation ! 
Trv. Beyond your expectation ? by this light, I knewe 
it would bee thus. 

Davp. Nay, fweet Trve-wit, forgiue me. 
70 Trv. No, I was ignorantly officious, impertinent ; this 
was the abfurd, weake part. 

Cle. Wilt thou afcribe that to merit, now, was meere 
fortune ? 

Trv. Fortune ? mere prouidence. Fortune had not 
75 a finger in 't. I faw it muft neceflarily in nature fall out 
fo : my genius is neuer falfe to me in thefe things. Shew 
me, how it could be otherwife. 

Davp. Nay, gentlemen, contend not, 'tis well now. 
Trv. AlafTe, I let him goe on with inconfiderate, and 
80 rafli, and what he pleas'd. 
[547] Cle. Away thou ftrange iuftifier of thy felfe, to bee 
wifer then thou wert, by the euent. 

Trv. Euent ! By this light, thou fhalt neuer perfwade 
me, but I fore-faw it, afwell as the ftarres themfelues. 

Davp. Nay, gentlemen, 'tis well now : doe you two 
entertaine fir lOHN Daw, with difcourse, while I fend her 
away with inftrudions. 

Trv. I'll be acquainted with her, firft, by your fauour. 
Cle. Mafter Trve-wit, lady, a friend of ours. 
90 Trv. I am forry, I haue not knowne you fooner, lady, 
to celebrate this rare vertue of your filence. 

Cle. Faith, an' you had come fooner, you fliould ha' 
feene, and heard her well celebrated in fir lOHN Daw's 
madrigalls. 
95 Trv. Iack Daw, god faue you, when faw you La- 

FOOLE ? 

Daw. Not since laft night, mafler Trve-WIT. 

67 I knewe] I knew Q.. . 



sc. iiii] The Jilent Woman 39 

Trv, That 's miracle ! I thought you two had beene 
infeparable. 

Daw. Hee's gone to inuite his guefts. 100 

Trv. Gods fo ! tis true ! what a falfe memory haue 
I towards that man ! I am one : I met him e'ne now, 
vpon that he calls his delicate fine blacke horfe, rid into 
a foame, with poafting from place to place, and perfon to 
perfon, to giue 'hem the cue — ^°5 

CLE. Left they fliould forget ? 

Trv. Yes : there was neuer poore captaine tooke more 
paines at a mufter to fhow men, then he, at this meale, to 
fhew friends. 

Daw. It is his quarter-feaft, fir. "o 

Cle. What ! doe you fay fo, fir lohn ? 

Trv. Nay, Iack Daw will not be out, at the beft 
friends hee has, to the talent of his wit : where 's his miftris, 
to heare and applaud him ? Is flie gone ! 

Daw. Is miftris Epicoene gone ? "5 

Cle. Gone afore, with fir Davphine, I warrant, to the 
place. 

Trv. Gone afore ! that were a manifeft iniurie ; a dif- 
grace and a halfe : to refufe him at fuch a feftiuall time, as 
this, being a Brauery, and a Wit too. ^2° 

Cle. Tut, hee'll fwallow it like creame : hee 's better 
read in iure ciuili, then to efteeme any thing a difgrace is 
offer'd him from a miftris. 

Daw. Nay, let her eene goe ; fhe fhall fit alone, and 
bee dumbe in her chamber, a weeke together, for lOHN 125 
Daw, I warrant her : do's ftie refufe nie ? 

Cle. No, fir, doe not take it fo to heart : fhee do's not 
refufe you, but a little negle6l you. Good faith, Trve-WIT, 
you were too blame to put it into his head, that fhee do's 
refufe him. 130 

98 That 's miracle] That's a miracle i640. . . tvjo] om. 1768 loi Gods 

so !] 'Odso ! G tis] tls Q 103 into a foame] into foam W G 128 neglect] 
neglects WG 



40 The Jilent Woman 

Trv. Shee do's refufe him, fir, palpably : how euer you 
mince it. An' I were as hee, I would fweare to fpeake 
ne're a word to her, to day, for 't. 

Daw. By this light, no more I will not. 
[548] 135 Trv. Nor to any body elfe, fir. 

Daw. Nay, I will not fay fo, gentlemen. 

CLE. It had beene an excellent happy condition for the 
company, if you could haue drawne him to it. 

Daw. I'll be very melancholique, i' faith. 
140 Cle. As a dog, if I were as you, fir lOHN. 

TrV. Or a fnaile, or a hog-loufe: I would roule my 
felfe vp for this day, introth, they fhould not vnwinde me. 

Daw. By this pick-tooth, fo I will. 

Cle. 'Tis well done : he beginnes already to be angry 
145 with his teeth. 

Daw. Will you goe, gentlemen ? 

Cle. Nay, you muft walke alone, if you bee right 
melancholique, fir lOHN. 

Trv. Yes, fir, wee'U dog you, wee'U follow you a farre 

150 off. 

Cle. Was there euer fuch a two yards of knighthood, 
meafur'd out by Time, to be fold to laughter ? 

Trv. a meere talking mole ! hang him : no mufhrome 
was euer so frefh. A fellow fo vtterly nothing, as he 
155 knowes not what he would be. 

Cle. Let's follow him : but firft, let's goe to Davphine, 
hee 's houering about the houfe, to heare what newes. 
Trv. Content. 

131 Shee do's refuse him, sir] Sir, shee do's refuse him IGiO . . . 139, 148 
melancholick 1692 . . .; melancholy G 



vv 



The Jilent Woman 41 



A a II. Scene V. 

Morose, Epicoene, Cvtberd, Mvte. 
Elcome Cvtberd ; draw neere with you faire 



chardge : and, in her eare, foftly intreat her to 

vnmafque ( ) So. Is the dore fliut ? ( ) inough. Now, 

Cvtberd, with the fame difcipHne I vfe to my family, I will 
queftion you. As I conceiue, CvTBERD, this gentlewoman is 5 
fhee, you haue prouided, and brought, in hope fliee will fit 
me in the place and perfon of a wife? Anfwer me not, but 

with your leg, vnlefTe it be otherwife : ( ) very well done 

Cvtberd. I conceiue, befides, Cvtberd, you haue beene 
pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and quallities, 10 
or elfe you would not preferre her to my acceptance, in 
the waighty confequence of marriage. ( ) this I con- 
ceiue, Cvtberd. Anfwer me not but with your leg, 

vnleffe it bee otherwife. ( ) Very well done CVTBERD. 

Giue afide now a little, and leaue me to examine her con- 15 
dition, and aptitude to my affedlion. Shee is exceeding ^^^^^v 
faire, and of a fpeciall good fauour : a fweet compofition, ^'^^"^'''^''' 
or harmony of limmes ; her temper of beauty has the true her. 
height of my blood. The knaue hath exceedingly wel 
fitted me without : I will now trie her within. Come 20 
neere, faire gentlewoman : let not my behauiour feeme 
rude, though vnto you, being rare, it may happely appeare 

Arrange. ( ) Nay, | lady, you may fpeake, though CvT- she 

BERD, and my man, might not : for, of all founds, onely, fTiql 
the fweet voice of a faire lady has the iuft length of mine 25 
eares, I befeech you, fay lady, out of the firft fire of meet- 
ing eyes, (they fay) loue is ftricken : doe you feele any fuch 

Act II. Scene V.] Scene III. A Roo7?i in Morose's House. G 
I you] your Q . .. 12 conceiue F\ conceiue Q. .. 22 happely] 

happily Q 23 (— ( F\ (— ) Q 26 eares] eare Q 

D 



42 The Jilent Woman [act ii 

motion, fodenly fliot into you, from any part you fee in 

Curffie. me ? ha, lady ? ( ) Alaffe, lady, thefe anfwers by filent 

3° curt'fies, from you, are too courtleffe, and fimple. I haue 
euer had my breeding in court : and fliee that fhall bee my 
wife, muft bee accomplifhed with courtly and audacious 
ornaments. Can you fpeake lady ? 
She Epi. ludge you, forfooth. 

•^^j" 35 MOR. What fay you, lady ? fpeake out, I befeech you. 
Epi. Judge you, forfooth. 

MOR. O' my iudgement, a diuine foftnes ! but can 
you naturally, lady, as I enioyne thefe by dodrine & 
induftry, referre^your felf to the fearch of my iudgement, 
40 and (not taking pleafure in your tongue, which is a womans 
chiefeft pleafure) thinke it plaufible, to anfwer me by filent 
geftures, fo long as my fpeeches iumpe right, with what 

Curf/le. you conceiue ? ( ) Excellent ! diuine ! if it were poffible 

fhe fliould hold out thus ! Peace, CvTBERD, thou art made 
45 for euer, as thou haft made mee, if this felicitie haue lafting : 
but I will trie her further. Deare lady, I am courtly, I tell 
you, and I muft haue mine eares banqueted with pleafant, 
and wittie conferences, pretty girds, fcoffes, and daliance in 
her, that I meane to choofe for my bedpheere. The 
50 ladles in court, thinke it a most defperate impaire to their 
quickeneffe of wit, and good carriage, if they cannot giue 
occafion for a man to court 'hem ; and, when an amorous 
difcourfe is fet on foot, minifter as good matter to continue 
it, as himfelfe : and doe you alone fo much differ from all 
55 them, that, what they (with fo much circumftance) affed, 
and toile for, to feeme learn'd, to feeme iudicious, to feeme 
fharpe, and conceited, you can bury in your felfe, with filence? 
and rather truft your graces to the faire confcience of 
vertue, then to the worlds, or your owne proclamation ? 

28 sodenly] suddenly 1640 ... 30 from you] om. you 1717 33 lady] 

, lady Q 37 O'] On G 40 (not taking pleasure. . .)] , not taking 

pleasure . . . , G 44 Cvtbrd /^ Cvtberd Q . .. 55 (with . . . circumstance)] 
, with . . . circumstance, G 56 toile for] toile for them 1768 



sc. v] The filent Woman 43 

Epi. I fiiould be forry elfe. 60 

MoR. What fay you, ladie ? good ladle, fpeake out. 

Epi. I fliould be forrie, elfe. 

MoR. That forrow doth fill me with gladnefle ! O 
Morose ! thou art happie aboue mankinde ! pray that 
thou maieft containe thy felfe. I will onely put her to it 65 
once more, and it fliall be with the vtmoft touch, and teft 
of their fexe. But heare me, faire lady, I doe alfo loue to 
fee her, whom I fliall choofe for my heicfar, to be the firft 
and principall in all fafliions ; praecede all the dames at 
court, by a fortnight ; haue her counfell of taylors, lin- 7° 
neners, lace-women, embroyderers, and fit with 'hem fome- 
times twife a day, vpon French intelligences ; and then 
come foorth, varied like Nature, or oftner then flie, and 
better, by the helpe of Art, her aemulous feruant. This 
doe I affed:. And how will you be able, lady, with this 75 
frugalitie of fpeech, to giue the manifold (but necefTarie) 
inftrudions, | for that bodies, thefe fleeues, thofe skirts, this [550] 
cut, that ftitch, this embroyderie, that lace, this wire, thofe 
knots, that ruffe, thofe rofes, this girdle, that fanne, the 
tother skarfe, thefe gloues ? ha I what fay you, ladie. 80 

Epi. I'll leaue it to you, fir. 

MOR. How, lady ? pray you, rife a note. 

Epi. I leaue it to wifdome, and you fir. 

MOR. Admirable creature ! I will trouble you no 
more : I will not finne againft so fweet a fimplicity. Let 85 
me now be bold to print, on thofe diuine lips, the feale of 
being mine. CvTBERD, I giue thee the leafe of thy houfe 

free : thanke me not, but with thy leg ( ) I know what 

thou woulft fay, fliee's poore, and her friends deceafed ; 
fliee has brought a wealthy dowrie in her filence, CVT- 90 
BERD : and in refped of her pouerty, CvTBERD, I fliall 
haue her more louing, and obedient, CvTBERD. Goe thy 
waies, and get me a miniflier prefently, with a foft, low 

68 heicfar] heifer 2640 .. . 70 her] <?/«. WG 76 (but necessarie) ] 

om. () 6' 77 skirts] sirkts Q 93 soft, low] soft -low F^ 

D 2, 



44 The filent Woman [actii 

voice to marry vs, and pray him he will not be impertinent, 
95 but briefe as he can ; away : foftly, CVTBERD. Sirrah, 
condu6t your miftris into the dining roome, your now- 
miftris, O my felicity ! how I fliall bee reueng'd on mine 
infolent kinfman, and his plots, to fright me from marry- 
ing ! This night I wil get an heire, and thruft him out of 

loo my bloud like a ftranger ; he would be knighted, forfooth, 
and thought by that meanes to raigne ouer me, his title 
muft doe it : no kinfman, I will now make you bring mee 
the tenth lords, and the fixteenth ladies letter, kinfman ; and 
it fhall doe you no good kinfman. Your knighthood it 

105 felfe fhall come on it's knees, and it fhall be reiedred ; it 
fhall bee fued for it's fees to execution, and not bee re- 
deem'd ; it fhall cheat at the tweluepeny ordinary, it 
knighthood, for it's diet all the terme time, and tell tales 
for it in the vacation, to the hoftefife : or it knighthood fliall 

no doe worfe ; take fandtuary in Coleharbor, and faft. It fliall 
fright all it friends, with borrowing letters ; and when one 
of the foure-fcore hath brought it knighthood ten fliillings, 
it knighthood fliall go to the Cranes, or the Beare at the 
Bridge-iooty and be drunk in feare : it fhal not haue money 

115 to difcharge one tauerne reckoning, to inuite the old cred- 
itors, to forbeare it knighthood ; or the new, that fliould 
be, to truft it knighthood. It fhall be the tenth name in 
the bond, to take vp the commoditie of pipkins, and itone 
iugs ; and the part thereof fliall not furnifli it knighthood 

120 forth, for the attempting of a bakers widdow, a browne 
bakers widdow. It fliall giue it knighthoods name, for a 
Jiallion, to all gamefome citizens wiues, and bee refus'd ; 
when the mafler of a dancing fchoole, or {How do you call 
him) the worft reueller in the towne is taken : it fliall want 

125 clothes, and by reafon of that, wit, to foole to lawyers. It 
fhall not haue hope to repaire it felfe by Confiantinople, 

96 now-mistris] now mistris F^ 97 I shall] shall 1 1692 . . . 

112 hath] had tV 123 or {//ow do you call him)] or how, do you call 

him, G 



sc. v] The Jilent Woman 45 

Ireland, or Virginia ; but the beft, and laft fortune to it 
knighthood fliall be, to make DOL Teare-SHEET, or Kate 
Common, a lady : and fo, it knighthood may eate. 



Adl II. Scene VI. [551] 

Trve-wit, Davphine, Clerimont, Cvtberd. 

A Re you fure he is not gone by ? 
Davp. No, I ftaid in the fliop euer fince. 

Cle. But, he may take the other end of the lane. 

Davp. No, I told him I would be here at this end : 
I appointed him hether. 5 

Trv. What a barbarian it is to flay then ! 

Davp. Yonder he comes. 

Cle. And his charge left behinde him, which is a very ■ 
good figne, Davphine. 

Davp. How now, Cvtberd, fucceedes it, or no ? 10 

CvT. Paft imagination, fir, omnis fecunda ; you could 
not haue pray'd, to haue had it fo wel : Saltat fenex, as 
it is i' the prouerbe, he do's triumph in his felicity; admires 
the party ! he has giuen me the leafe of my houfe too ! 
and, I am now going for a filent minifter to marry 'hem, fg 
and away. 

Trv. Slight, get one o' the filenc'd minifters, a zealous 
brother would torment him purely. 

CvT. Cum priuilegio, fir. 

Davp. O, by no meanes, let's doe nothing to hinder it 20 
now when 'tis done and finiflied, I am for you : for any 
deuife of vexation. 

CvT. And that fliall be, within this halfe houre, vpon 
my dexterity, gentlemen. Contriue what you can, in the 
meane time, bonis aiiibus. 25 

Cle. How the flaue doth latine it! 

Act IL Scene VL] Scene IV. A Lane near Morose's House. G 
17 Slight] 'Slight i692. .. 



46 The Jilent Woman [act il 

Trv. It would be made a ieft to pofterlty, firs, this daies 
mirth, if yee will. 

Cle. Beflirew his heart that will not, I pronounce. 
30 Davp. And, for my part. What is't ? 

Trv. To tranflate all La-Fooles company, and his 
feaft hether, to day, to celebrate this bride-ale. 
Davp, I mary, but how will't be done ? 
Trv. I'll vndertake the direding of all the ladie-guefts 
35 thether, and then the meat mult follow. 

Cle. For gods fake, let's efire6l it : it will be an excel- 
lent comcsdy of affliction, fo many feuerall noyfes. 

Davp. But are they not at the other place already, 
thinke you ? 
40 Trv. I'll warrant you for the colledge-honors : one o* 
their faces has not the priming color laid on yet, nor the 
other her fmocke fleek'd. 

Cle. O, but they'll rife earlier then ordinary, to a feaft. 
Trv. Bell goe fee, and affure our felues. 
45 Cle. Who knowes the houfe ? 

Trv. I'll lead you, were you neuer there yet ? 
[552] Davp. Not I. 
CLE. Nor I. 

Trv. Where ha' you Hu'd then? not know TOM 
. 50 Otter ! 

Cle. No : for gods fake, what is he ? 
Trv. An excellent animal, equall with your Daw, or 
La-Foole, if not tranfcendent ; and do's latine it as much 
as your barber : hee is his wifes Subie6t, he calls her Prin- 
55 cefle, and at fuch times as thefe, followes her vp and downe 
the houfe like a page, with his hat off, partly for heate, 
partly for reuerence. At this inftant, hee is marflialling of 
his bull, beare, and horfe. 

Davp. What be thofe, in the name of Sphinx ? 
60 Trv. Why fir ? hee has beene a great man at the beare- 
garden in his time : and from that fubtle fport, has tane 

61 tane] ta'en W G 



sc. vi] The Jilent Woman 47 

the witty denomination of his chiefe caroufing cups. One 
he calls his bull, another his beare, another his horfe. And 
then hee has his lefiTer glafles, that hee calls his deere, and 
his ape ; and feuerall degrees of 'hem too : and neuer is 65 
well, nor thinkes any intertainement perfect, till thefe be 
brought out, and fet o' the cupbord. 

CLE. For gods loue ! we fliould mifle this, if we (hould 
not goe. 

Trv. Nay, he has a thoufand things as good, that will 70 
fpeake him all day. He will raile on his wife, with cer- 
taine common places, behinde her backe ; and to her 
face 

Davp. No more of him. Let's goe fee him, I peti- 
tion you. 75 



^6i III. Scene I. 

Otter, M"- Otter, Trve-wit, Clerimont, 
Davphine. 

NAy, good Princefle, heare me pauca verba. 
M"- Ot. By that light, I'll ha' you chain'd vp, with 
your bul-dogs, and beare-dogges, if you be not ciuill the 
fooner. I'll fend you to kennell, i'faith. You were beffc 
baite me with your bull, beare, and horfe ? Neuer a time, 5 
that the courtiers, or collegiates come to the houfe, but you 
make it 2. Jhrouetuefday ! I would haue you get your whit- 
foniide-veluet-cap, and your ftaffe i' your hand, to inter- 
taine 'hem : yes introth, doe. 

Ott. Not fo, Princefle, neither, but vnder correftion, 10 
fweete Princefle, gi' me leaue — thefe things I am knowne 
to the courtiers by. It is reported to them for my humor, 
and they receiue it fo, and doe exped it. TOM Otters 

66 intertainement] entaynment Q 
Act III. Scene I.] Scene I includes Sc. I, II, and III. A Room in Otter's 
House. G 8 intertaine] entertaine Q 



48 The filent Woman [act in 

bull, beare, and horfe is knowne all ouer England, in rerum 

15 natura. 

]Yjr3. Q-p Fore me, I wil na-tu7^e 'hem ouer to Paris- 
garden, and na-ture you thether too, if you pronounce 
'hem againe. Is a beare a fit beaft, or a bull, to mixe in 
fociety with great ladies ? thinke i' your difcretion, in any 

20 good politic. 
[553] Ott. The horfe then, good PrincefTe. 

M'«- Ot. Well, I am contented for the horfe : they 
loue to bee well hors'd, I know. I loue it my felfe. 

Ott. And it is a delicate fine horfe this. Poetarinn 

25 Pegafiis. Vnder corredrion, PrincefTe, Ivpiter did turne 
himfelfe into a — Taiirns, or Bull, vnder corredrion, good 
Princefle. 

M"- Ot. By my integritie, I'll fend you ouer to the 
banke-fide, I'll commit you to the Mafter of the garden, if 

30 I heare but a fyllable more. Muft my houfe, or my roofe, 
be polluted with the fent of beares, and buls, when it is 
perfum'd for great ladies ? Is this according to the inftru- 
ment, when I married you ? That I would bee Princefle, 
and raigne in mine owne houfe : and you would be my 

35 fubied:, and obay me ? What did you bring me, fliould make 
you thus peremptory ? Do I allow you your halfe-crowne 
a day, to fpend, where you will, among your gamfters, to 
vexe and torment me, at fuch times as thefe? Who giues 
you your maintenance, I pray you ? who allowes you your 

40 horfe-meat, and mans-meat ? your three futes of apparell 
a yeere? your foure paire of ftockings, one filke, three 
worfted ? your cleane linnen, your bands, and cuffes when 
I can get you to weare 'hem ? 'Tis mar'l you ha' hem on 
now. Who graces you with courtiers, or great perfonages, 

45 to fpeake to you out of their coaches, and come home to 
your houfe ? Were you euer fo much as look'd vpon by 

20 politic] polity H ...; policy G 21 then] than l&iO 24 this] 

om. Q 28 my integritie] om. my 171? 31 sent] scent Q. .. 

43 mar'l] mar'le 1692 ...; marie G 



sc. i] The Jilent Woman 49 

a lord, or a lady, before I married you : but on the Eafter, 
or Whitfon-holy-daies ? and then out at the banquetting- 
houfe windore, when Ned Whiting, or George Stone, 
were at the flake ? 50 

(Trv. For gods fake, let's goe ftaue her off him.) 
M"- Ot. Anfwere me to that. And did not I take 
you vp from thence, in an old greafie buffe-doublet, with 
points ; and greene vellet fleeues, out at the elbowes ? you 
forget this. 55 

(Trv. Shee'll worry him, if we helpe not in time.) 
]y[r8. Q-p Q^ here are fome o' the gallants ! Goe to, 
behaue your felfe diftindrly, and with good moralitie ; Or, 
I proteft, I'll take away your exhibition. 



Adl III. Scene 11. 

Trve-wit, M"- Otter, Cap. Otter, Clerimont, 
Davphine, Cvtberd. 

BY your leaue, faire miftris Otter, I'll be bold to enter 
thefe gentlemen in your acquaintance. 

M'^- Ot. It fliall not be obnoxious, or difficill, fir. 

Trv. How do's my noble Captaine ? Is the bull, 
beare, and horfe, in reriini natura Hill ? 5 

Ott. Sir, Sic vifum fiiperis. 

M"- Ot. I would you would but intimate 'hem, doe. 
Goe your waies in, and get tofts, and butter, made for the 
wood-cocks. That's a fit prouince for you. 

CLE. Alas, what a tyrannic, is this poore fellow married 10 [554] 
too. 

Trv. O, but the fport will be anon, when we get him 
loofe. 

Dav. Dares he euer fpeake ? 

51 () om. G 54 vellet] velvet l&iO ... 56 () om. G 

3 It shall] I shall 1717 W 



50 The filent Woman [act hi 

15 Trv. No Anabaptift euer rail'd with the like licence : 
but marke her language in the meanetime, I befeech you. 

M"- Ot. Gentlemen, you are very aptly come. My 
cofin, fir Amorovs, will be here briefly. 

Trv. In good time lady. Was not fir lOHN Daw here, 
20 to aske for him, and the companie ? 

M"- Ot. I cannot afllire you, M'- Trve-WIT. Here 
was a very melancholy knight in a ruffe, that demanded 
my fubie6t for fomebody, a gentleman, I thinke. 
Cle. I, that was he, lady. 
25 M'^- Ot. But he departed ftraight, I can refolue you. 
Dav. What an excellent choice phrafe, this lady ex- 
preffes in ! 

Trv. O, fir ! fhee is the onely authenticall courtier, that 
is not naturally bred one, in the citie. 
30 M"- Ot, You haue taken that report vpon truft, gen- 
tlemen. 

Trv. No, I aflure you, the court gouernes it fo, lady, 
in your behalfe. 

M'^- Ot. I am the feruant of the court, and courtiers, fir. 
35 Trv. They are rather your idolaters. 
M"- Ot. Not fo, fir. 

Dav. How now, Cvtberd ? Any croflTe ? 
Cvt. O, no, fir: Omnia bene. 'Twas neuer better o' 
the hinges, all's fure. I haue fo pleas'd him with a curate, 
40 that hee's gone too't almoft with the delight he hopes for 
foone. 

Dav. What is he, for a vicar? 

Cvt. One that has catch' d a cold, fir, and can fcarfe 
bee heard fixe inches off; as if he fpoke out of a buU-rufh, 
45 that were not pickt, or his throat were full of pith : a fine 
quick fellow, and an excellent barber of prayers. I came 
to tell you, fir, that you might omnem mouere lapidem. (as 
they fay) be readie with your vexation. 

21 Mr.] Master G 45 pith] pitch i640 . . . im 47 (as they say)] 

, as they say, G 



sc. ii] The Jilent Woman 51 

Dav. Gramercy, honeft CvTBERD, be there abouts 
with thy key to let vs in. 50 

CvT. I will not faile you, fir : Admanum. 

Trv. Well, I'll goe watch my coaches. 

CLE. Doe ; and wee'll fend Daw to you, if you meet 
him not. 

M"- Ot. Is mafter Trve-WIT gone ? 55 

Dav. Yes, lady, there is fome vnfortunate bufinefle 
fallen out. 

M"- Ot. So I iudg'd by the phifiognomy of the 
fellow, that came in, and I had a dreame laft night too of 
the new pageant, and my lady MaiorefiTe, which is alwaies 60 
very ominous to me. I told it my lady Havghty t'other 
day; when her honour came hether to fee fome China 
ftuffes : and fhee expounded it, out of Artemidorvs, and 
I haue found it fmce very true. It has done me many 
affronts. 65 

Cle. Your dreame, lady? 

M"- Ot. Yes, fir, any thing I doe but dreame o' the 
city. It ftaynd me a damafque table-cloth, coft me eigh- 
teen pound at one time ; and burnt me | a blacke fatten [555] 
gowne, as I flood by the fire, at my ladie Centavres 70 
chamber in the colledge, another time. A third time, at the 
Lords mafque, it dropt all my wire, and my ruffe with 
waxe-candle, that I could not goe vp to the banquet. 
A fourth time, as I was taking coach to go to Ware, to meet 
a friend, it dafli'd me a new fute all ouer (a crimfon fattin 75 
doublet, and blacke veluet skirts) with a brewers horfe, 
that I was faine to goe in and fliift mee, and kept my 
chamber a leafh of daies for the anguifli of it. 

Davp. Thefe were dire mifchances, lady. 

Cle. I would not dwell in the citie, and 'twere fo fatall 80 
to mee. 

M'^- Ot. Yes fir, but I doe take aduife of my dodor, 
to dreame of it as little, as I can. 

58 iudg'd] adiudg'd Q 63 Artemidorts l^iO 



52 The Jilent Woman [act hi 

Davp. You doe well, miftris Otter. 
^5 M"- Ot. Will it pleafe you to enter the houfe farther, 
gentlemen ? 

Davp. And your fauour, lady : but we ftay to fpeake 
with a knight, fir lOHN Daw, who is here come. We (hall 
follow you, lady. 
90 M"- Ot. At your owne time, fir. It is my cofen fir 

Amorovs his feaft. 

Davp. I know it lady. 

M"- Ot. And mine together. But it is for his honour : 
and therefore I take no name of it, more then of the place. 
95 Davp. You are a bounteous kinfwoman. 
M"- Ot. Your feruant, fir. 



A a III. Sce7ie III. 
Clerimont, Daw, La-Foole, Davphine, Otter. 

X TT THy doe not you know it, fir lOHN Daw ? 
y y Daw. No, I am a rooke if I doe. 
Cle. I'll tell you then, fliee's married by this time ! 
And whereas you were put i' the head, that Ihee was gone 

5 with fir DAyPHiNE, I aflure you, fir Davphine has beene 
the nobleft, honefteft friend to you, that euer gentleman of 
your quality could boaft off. He has difcouer'd the whole 
plot, and made your miftris fo acknowledging, and indeed, 
fo afliamed of her iniurie to you, that flie defires you to 

10 forgiue her, and but grace her wedding with your prefence 
to day — She is to be married to a very good fortune, flie 
faies, his vnkle, old MoROSE: and flie will'd me in priuate 
to tell you, that flie fliall be able to doe you more fauours, 
and with more fecuritie now, then before. 

15 Daw. Did flie fay fo, i' faith ? 

91 Amorovs his feast] Amorous's feast 17&8 
I Why doe not you] om. not 1^0 . . . 1717 



SC. Ill] The Ji lent Woman 53 

Cle. Why, what doe you thinke of mee, fir lOHN ! 
aske fir Davphine. 

Daw. Nay, I beleeue you. Good fir Davphine, did 
fhee defire mee to forgiue her ? 

Davp. I afTure you, fir lOHN, fhe did. 20 

Daw. Nay then, I doe with all my heart, and I'll be iouialL [556] 

Cle. Yes, for looke you fir, this was the iniury to you. 
La-Foole intended this feafl: to honour her bridale day, 
and made you the propertie to inuite the colledge ladies, 
and promife to bring her : and then at the time, fliee fliould 25 
haue appear'd (as his friend) to haue giuen you the dor. 
Whereas now, fir Davphine has brought her to a feeling 
of it, with this kinde of fatisfadtion, that you fhall bring 
all the ladies to the place where fliee is, and be verie 
iouiall; and there, fhee will haue a dinner, which fhall be 3^ 
in your name : and fo dif-appoint La-Foole, to make you 
good againe, and (as it were) a fauer i' the man. 

Daw. As I am a knight, I honour her, and forgiue her 
hartily. 

Cle. Aboute it then prefently, Trve-wit is gone before 35 
to confront the coaches, and to acquaint you with fo much, 
if hee meet you. loyne with him, and 'tis well. See, here 
comes your Antagonift^ but take you no notice, but be 
verie iouiall. 

La-F. Are the ladies come, fir lOHN Daw, and your 40 
miftris ? fir Davphine ! you are exceeding welcome, and 
honeft mafter Clerimont. Where's my colfen ? did you 
fee no collegiats, gentlemen ? 

Davp. Collegiats ! Doe you not heare, fir Amorovs, 
how you are abus'd ? 45 

La-F. How fir ! 

Cle. Will you fpeake fo kindly to fir lOHN Daw, that 

has done you fuch an affront ? 

i8 Davp. i^] Daw. ?F. . . 20 Cle. i^] Davp. G" Sir Ihon ^i i^2 

25 should] would l&iQ . . . 26 (as his friend)] , as his friend, G 32 (as 

it were)] , as it were, G sauer i' the man] sauer i' the main 1711 . . . ; 
saver in the main G 



54 The Jilent Woman [act hi 

La-f. Wherein, gentlemen ? Let me be a futor to you 
6° to know, I befeech you ! 

Cle. Why, fir, his miftris is married to day, to fir 
Davphines vncle, your cofens neighbour, and hee has 
diuerted all the ladies, and all your company thether, to 
fruftrate your prouifion, and fticke a difgrace vpon you. 
55 He was here, now, to haue intic'd vs away from you too : 
but we told him his owne, I thinke. 

La-F. Has fir Iohn Daw wrong'd me fo in-humanely? 
Dav. He has done it, fir AmorOVS, moll: malicioufly, 
and trecheroufly : but if you'll be rul'd by vs, you fhall quit 
6o him i'faith. 

La-F. Good gentlemen ! I'll make one, beleeue it. 
How I pray ? 

Davp. Mary fir, get me your phefants, and your god- 
wits, and your beft meat, and difli it in filuer diflies of your 
65 cofens prefently, and fay nothing, but clap mee a cleane 
towell about you, like a fewer ; and bare-headed, march afore 
it with a good confidence ('tis but ouer the way, hard by) 
and we'll fecond you, where you flial fet it o' the boord, 
and bid 'hem welcome to't, which fliall fliow 'tis yours, and 
70 difgrace his preparation vtterly : and, for your cofen, where- 
as fliee fliould bee troubled here at home with care of 
making and giuing welcome, fliee fliall transferre all that 
labour thether, and bee a principall gueft her felfe, fit 
rank'd with the colledge-Honors, and bee' honor'd, and 
75 haue her health drunke as often, as bare, and as lowd as 
the befl: of 'hem. 
[557] La-F. I'll goe tell her prefently. It fliall be done, that's 
refolu'd. 

Cle. I thought he would not heare it out, but 'twould 
80 take him. 

Davp. Well, there be guefts, & meat now; how flial 
we do for mufique ? 

69 shall] will IV 



sa III] The Jilent Woman 55 

Cle. The fmell of the venifon, going through the 
ftreet, will inuite one noyfe of fidlers, or other. 

Davp. I would it would call the trumpeters thether. 85 

Cle. Faith, there is hope, they haue intelligence of all 
feafts. There's good correfpondence betwixt them, and the 
London-codkes. 'Tis twenty to one but we haue 'hem. 

Davp. 'Twill be a moll: folemne day for my vncle, and 
an excellent fit of mirth for vs. 90 

Cle. I, if we can hold vp the aemulation betwixt 
FoOLE, and Daw, and neuer bring them to expollulate. 

Davp. Tut, flatter 'hem both (as Trve-WIT fayes) and 
you may take their vnderftandings in a purfe-net. They'll 
beleeue themfelues to be iuft fuch men as we make 'hem, 9.^ 
neither more nor leflTe. They haue nothing, not the vfe of 
their fenfes, but by tradition. 

Cle. See! Sir Amorovs has his towell on aXr&didy. ^e enters 
Haue you perfwaded your coflen ? /ewer. 

La-f. Yes, 'tis verie faefible : fliee'U do any thing flie 100 
fayes, rather then the La-Fooles fliall be difgrac'd. 

Davp. She is a noble kinfwoman. It fliall be fuch a 
peft'ling deuice, fir AMOROVS ! It will pound all your ene- 
mies pradlifes to poulder, and blow him vp with his owne 
mine, his owne traine. 105 

La-F. Nay, wee'll giue fire, I warrant you. 

Cle. But you muft carry it priuately, without any 
noyfe, and take no notice by any meanes 

Ott. Gentlemen, my Princefle fayes, you fhall haue 
all her filuer 6.\^\es, fefiinate x and fhe's gone to alter her no 
tyre a little, and go with you 

Cle. And your felfe too, captaine Otter. 

Davp. By any meanes, fir. 

Ott. Yes fir, I doe meane it : but I would entreate my 
cofen fir Amorovs, and you gentlemen, to be futors to my 115 

88 we haue 'hem] he haue 'hem J640 . . . 1717 93 (as Trve-wit sayes)] 

, as Tniewit says, G 100 fsesible] feasible 1692. . . loi shall be] 

should be M 



56 The Jilent Woman [act hi 

Princefle, that I may carry my bull, and my beare, as well 
as my horfe. 

CLE. That you fhall doe, captaine Otter. 
La-f. My cofen will neuer confent, gentlemen. 
120 Davp. She muft confent, fir AmorovS, to reafon. 

La-f. Why, Ihe fayes they are no decorum among 
ladies. 

Ott. But they are decora^ and that's better, fir. 
Cle. I, fhee muft heare argument. Did not Pasiphae, 
125 who was a queene, loue a bull ? and was not Calisto, the 
mother of Arcas, turn'd into a beare, and made a ftarre, 
miftris Vrsvla, i' the heauens ? 

Ott. O God ! that I could ha' faid as much ! I will 
haue thefe flrories painted i' the beare-garden, ex Ouidij 
130 melamorphofi. 

Davp. Where is your PrinceflTe, Captaine ? pray' be our 
leader. 
[558] Ott. That I fliall, fir. 

CLE. Make hafte, good fir AmoROVS. 



^^ III. Scene II 1 1. 
Morose, Epicoene, Parson, Cvtberd. 



S' 



I Ir, there's an angel for your felfe, and a brace of angels 
for your cold. Mufis not at this mannage of my 
bounty. It is fit wee fliould thanke fortune, double to 
nature, for any benefit flie conferres vpon vs ; befides, it 
5 is your imperfedtion, but my folace. 
The Par. I thanke your worfliip, fo is it mine, now. 

%mTes, ^O^- ^hat fayes he, CVTBERD ? 

as hauing CvT. He faies, PrcBJlo^ fir, whenfoeuer your worfliip 
needes him, hee can be ready with the like. He got this 

128 God] lord G 131 pray'] pray 1692... 

Act in. Scene IIIL] Scenell includes IIII, V, VI, VII. A Room in Morose's 
House. G 



sc. iiii] The Jilent Woman 57 

cold with fitting vp late, and finging catches with cloth- 10 
workers. 

MOR. No more. I thanke him. 

Par. God keepe your worfliip, and giue you much ioy 
with your faire fpoufe. (Vmh, vmh.) foighes. 

MOR. O, 6, ftay Cvtberd ! let him giue me fiue fliillings 15 
of my money backe. As it is bounty to reward benefits, 
fo is it equity to mul6t iniuries. I will haue it. What 
fayes he ? 

CvT. He cannot change it, fir. 

MoR. It muft be chang'd. ao 

CvT. Cough againe. 

MoR. What fayes he? 

CvT. He will cough out the reft, fir. 

Par. (Vmh, vmh, vmh.) Againe. 

MoR. Away, away with him, ftop his mouth, away, 25 
I forgiue it. 

Epi. Fye, mafter MOROSE, that you will vfe this 
violence to a man of the church. 

MOR. How! 

Epi. It do's not become your grauity, or breeding, (as 30 
you pretend in court) to haue offer 'd this outrage on a water- 
man, or any more boyftrous creature, much lefiTe on a man 
of his ciuill coat. 

MOR. You can fpeake then ! 

Epi. Yes, fir. 35 

MOR. Speake, out I meane. 

Epi. I fir. Why, did you thinke you had married 
a ftatue? or a motion, onely ? one of the French puppets, 
with the eyes turn'd with a wire ? or fome innocent out of 
the hofpitall, that would fi:and with her hands thus, and 40 
a playfe mouth, and looke vpon you. 

MoR. O immodeftie ! a manifeft woman ! what Cvt- 
berd ? 

14, 24 (Vmh . . .)] Uh . .. G 30 (as yon pretend in court)] as you 

pretend, in court G 36 Speake, cut] Speake out /^j ^ . . . 

E 



58 The filent Woman [act hi 

Epi. Nay, neuer quarrell with CvTBERD, fir, it is too 

[559] 45 late now. I | confeflTe, it doth bate somewhat of the modeftie 

I had, when I writ fimply maide : but I hope, I fhall make 

it a ftocke ftill competent, to the eftate, and dignity of your 

wife. 

MOR. Shee can talke ! 
50 Epi. Yes indeed, fir. 

MoR. What, firrah. None of my knaues, there ? where 
is this impoftor, CVTBERD ? 

Epi. Speake to him, fellow, fpeake to him. I'll haue 
none of this coadled, vnnaturall dumbnefle in my houfe, 
55 in a family where I gouerne. 

MOR. She is my Regent already ! I haue married 
a Penthesilea, a Semiramis, fold my liberty to a 
diftaffe ! 

A a III. Sce7te V. 

Trve-wit, Morose, Epicoene. 

"1 7"! THere's mafter MOROSE? 
V V MoR. Ishecomeagaine! lordhauemercyvponme. 
Trv. I wifh you all ioy, miffcris Epicoene, with your 
graue and honourable match. 
£ Epi. I returne you the thankes, mafter Trve-WIT, fo 
friendly a wifh deferues. 

MoR. She has acquaintance, too ! 

Trv. God faue you, fir, and giue you all contentment 

in your faire choife, here. Before I was the bird of night 

10 to you, the owle but now I am the meffenger of peace, 

a doue, and bring you the glad wiflies of many friends, 

to the celebration of this good houre. 

MOR. What houre, fir ? 

Trv. Your marriage houre fir. I commend your 

15 refolution, that (notwithftanding all the dangers I laid afore 

you, in the voice of a night-crow) would yet goe on, and bee 

9 your faire] you faire W 



sc. v] The Jilent Woman 59 

your felfe. It fhewes you are a man conftant to your own 
ends, and vpright to your purpofes, that would not be put 
off with left-handed cries. 

MOR. How fliould you arriue at the knowledge of fo 20 
much! 

Trv. Why, did you euer hope, fir, committing the 
fecrecie of it to a barber, that lefle then the whole towne 
fhould know it ? you might as wel ha' told it the conduit, or 
the bake-houfe, or the infant'ry that follow the court, and 25 
with more fecuritie. Could your grauitie forget fo olde 
and noted a remnant, as, lippis & iojtforibus notimi. Well 
fir, forgiue it your felfe now, the fault, and be communicable 
with your friends. Here will bee three or foure fafliionable 
ladies, from the colledge, to vifit you prefently, and their 30 
traine of minions, and followers. 

MOR. Barre my dores ! barre my dores ! where are all 
my eaters ? my mouthes now ? barre vp my dores, you 
varlets. 

Epi. He is a varlet, that flirres to fuch an office. Let 35 
'hem ftand open. | I would fee him that dares mooue his [560] 
eyes toward it. Shal I haue a harricado made againil my 
friends, to be barr'd of any pleafure they can bring in to me 
with honorable vifitation. 

MOR. O Amazonian \vsy^\xdiQX\c&\ 40 

Trv. Nay faith, in this, fir, llie fpeakes but reafon : and 
me thinkes is more continent then you. Would you goe 
to bed fo prefently, fir, afore noone ? a man of your head, 
and haire, fliould owe more to that reuerend ceremony, 
and not mount the marriage-bed, like a towne-bul, or 45 
a mountaine-goate ; but ftay the due feafon ; and afcend it 
then with religion, and feare. Thofe delights are to be 
fteep'd in the humor, and filence of the night ; and giue 
the day to other open pleafures, and iollities of feait, of 

26 forget] oni. 1768 39 with honorable] with their honorable IV G 

44 reueuerend F"] reuerend IGiO ... 48 of the night;] of the Night ? 1692 H 
49 feast] feasting 16iQ . . . 

E % 



6o The filent Woman [act hi 

50 mufique, of reuells, of difcourse : wee'll haue all, fir, that 

may make your Hymen high, and happy. 

MOR. O, my torment, my torment ! 

Trv. Nay, if you indure the firffc halfe houre, fir, fo 

tedioufly, and with this irkfomnelle ; what comfort, or hope, 

55 can this faire gentlewoman make to her felfe hereafter, in 

the confideration of fo many yeeres as are to come 

MoR. Of my afflidion. Good fir, depart, and let her 
doe it alone. 

Trv. I haue done, fir. 
60 MOR. That curfed barber ! 

Trv. (Yes faith, a curfed wretch indeed, fir.) 

MOR. I haue married his citterne, that's common to all 

men. Some plague, aboue the plague 

Trv. (All Egypts ten plagues.) 
65 MoR. Reuenge me on him. 

Trv. 'Tis very well, fir. If you laid on a curfe or two, 
more, I'll afTure you hee'U beare 'hem. As, that he may 
get the poxe with feeking to cure it, fir ? Or, that while he 
is curling another mans haire, his owne may drop off? Or, 
70 for burning feme male-baudes lock, he may haue his braine 
beat out with the curling-iron ? 

MOR. No, let the wretch Hue wretched. May he get 
the itch, and his fliop fo loufie, as no man dare come at 
him, nor he come at no man. 
75 Trv. (I, and if he would fwallow all his balles for pills, 
let not them purge him) ^ 

MOR. Let his warming pan be euer cold. . ' 
Trv. (A perpetuall froll vnderneath it, fir) 
MOR. Let him neuer hope to fee fire againe. 
80 Trv. (But in hell, fir) 

MOR. His chaires be alwaies empty, his fciflbrs ruft, 
and his combes mould in their cafes. 



61 ( ) G^ om. in this and following speeches of Truewit 64 Egypts] 
Aegypts miO 1G'J3 H 



sc. v] The filent Woman 6i 

Trv. Very dreadfull that ! (And may hee loofe the 
inuention, fir, of caruing lanternes in paper) 

MOR. Let there be no baud carted that yeare, to 85 
employ a bafon of his : but let him be glad to eate his 
fponge, for bread. 

Trv. And drinke lotiwn to it, and much good doe him. [561] 

MOR. Or^ for want of bread 

TRV,/''fiat eare-waxe, fir. I'll helpe you. Or, draw his 9° 
owne teeth, and adde them to the lute-ftring. 

MoR. No, beate the old ones to poulder, and make 
bread of them. 

Trv. (Yes, make meale o' the millftones.) 

MOR. May all the botches, and burnes, that he has 95 
cur'd on others, breake out vpon him. 

Trv. And he now forget the cure of 'hem in himfelfe, 
fir : or, if he do remember it, let him ha' fcrap'd all his 
linnen into lint for't, and haue not a rag left him, to fet vp 
with. 100 

MOR. Let him neuer fet vp againe, but haue the gout 
in his hands for euer. Now, no more, fir. 

Trv. O that lail was too high fet ! you might goe lefTe 
with him i' faith, and bee reueng'd enough : as, that he be 
neuer able to new-paint his pole 105 

Mor. Good fir, no more. I forgot my felfe. 

Trv. Or, want credit to take vp with a combe- 
maker 

Mor. No more, fir. 

Trv. Or, hauing broken his glafTe in a former defpaire, no 
fall now into a much greater, of euer getting another 

Mor. I befeech you, no more. 

Trv. Or, that he neuer be trufted with trimming of 
any but chimney-fweepers- 

Mor. Sir 115 



83 loose] lose l&iO ... 92 poulder] powder KiiO ... 99 to set vp] 

for to set up l&iO ... 113 trimming] triming 1&^2 H 



62 The Jilent Woman [act hi 

Trv. Or, may he cut a colliers throat with his rafor, 
by ckance-7nedlee, and yet hang for't. 

MOR. I will forgiue him, rather then heare any more. 
I befeech you, fir. 



Aa III. Scene VI. 

Daw, Morose, Trve-wit, Havghty, Centavre, 
Mavis, Trvsty. 

THis way, madame. 
MOR. O, the fea breakes in vpon me ! another floud ! 
an inundation ! I fliall be orewhelm'd with noife. It 
beates already at my fliores. I feele an earthquake in my 
5 felfe, for't. 

Daw. 'Giue you ioy, miftrifle. 
MOR. Has fhee feruants too ! 
Skekiffes Daw. I haue brought fome ladies here to fee, and 
^femraii ^"^w you. My ladie Havghty, this my lady Centavre, 
as he 10 miftreffe DOL Mavis, miftrelTe Trvstie my ladie Havgh- 
^them!^ ties woman. Where's your husband ? let's fee him : can 

he endure no noife? let me come to him. 
[562] MoR. What nomenclator is this ! 

Trv. Sir Iohn Daw, fir, your wifes feruant, this. 
15 MoR. A Daw, and her feruant! O, 'tis decreed, 'tis 
decreed of mee, and fhee haue fuch feruants. 

Trv. Nay fir, you mufl kifle the ladies, you muft not 
goe away, now ; they come toward you, to feeke you out. 
Hav. r faith, mafler MOROSE, would you fteale 
20 a marriage thus, in the midfl of fo many friends, and not 
acquaint vs ? Well, I'll kifTe you, notwithflanding the 
iuftice of my quarrel : you fliall giue me leaue, miflrefle, to 
vfe a becomming familiarity with your husband. 

Epi. Your ladifhip do's me an honour in it, to let me 
25 know hee is fo worthy your fauour : as, you haue done 
117 and yet hang] and be hang'd l(jd2 H . ..; and yet be hang'd W G 



sc. vi] The Jilent Woman 63 

both him and me grace, to vifit fo vnprepar'd a paire to 
entertaine you. 

MOR. Complement ! Complement ! 

Epi. But I mull lay the burden of that, vpon my 
feruant, here. 3° 

Hav. It fliall not need, miftrefle MoROSE, wee will all 
beare, rather then one fliall be oppreft. 

MOR. I know it : and you will teach her the faculty, if 
fliee bee to learne it. 

Hav. Is this the filent woman ? 35 

Cen. Nay, fliee has found her tongue fince fliee was 
married, mafter Trve-WIT fayes. 

Hav. O, mafter Trve-wit ! Taue you. What kinde of 
creature is your bride here ? fhe fpeakes^ me thinkes ! 

Trv. Yes madame, beleeue it, fhe is a gentlewoman of 4° 
very abfolute behauiour, and of a good race. 

Hav. And Iack Daw told vs, flie could not fpeake. 

Trv. So it was carried in plot, madam, to put her 
vpon this old fellow, by fir Davphine, his nephew, and one 
or two more of vs : but fhee is a woman of an excellent 45 
aflurance, and an extraordinarie happie wit, and tongue. 
You fliall fee her make rare fport with Daw, ere night. 

Hav. And he brought vs to laugh at her ! 

Trv. That falls out often, madame, that he that thinkes 
himfelfe the mafter-wit, is the mafter-foole. I afTure your 50 
lady-fliip, yee cannot laugh at her. 

Hav. No, weell haue her to the colledge : and fliee 
haue wit, fhe fhall bee one of vs ! fhall fliee not Centavre ? 
wee'll make her a collegiate. 

Cen. Yes faith, madame, and Mavis, and fliee will fet 55 
vp a fide. 

Trv. Beleeue it madame, and miftris MAVIS, fliee will 
fuftaine her part. 

Mav. I'll tell you that, when I haue talk'd with her, 
and try'd her. 60 

38 'saue] saue Q ; 'save l&iO ... 42 lack] lac 1&92 59 that] hat M 



64 The filent Woman [act in 

Hav. Vfe her very ciuilly, Mavis. 
Mav. So I will, madame. 

MOR. Blefled minute, that they would whifper thus 

euer. 

65 Trv. In the meane time, madame, would but your lady- 

[563] ^ip helpe to [ vexe him a little : you know his difeafe, talke 

to him about the wedding ceremonies, or call for your 

gloues, or 

Hav. Let me alone. Centavre, helpe me. M'. 
70 bride-groome, where are you ? 

MOR. O, it was too miraculoufly good to laft! 
Hav. Wee fee no enfignes of a wedding, here ; no 
charader of a brideale : where be our skarfes, and our 
gloues? I pray you, giue 'hem vs. Let's know your 
75 brides colours, and yours, at leaft. 

Cen. Alas, madame, he has prouided none. 
MoR. Had I knowne your ladifhips painter, I would. 
Hav. He has giuen it you, Centavre, yfaith. But, doe 
you heare, M. MoROSE, a ieft will not abfolue you in this 
80 manner. You that haue fuck'd the milke of the court, and 
from thence haue beene brought vp to the very ftrong 
meates, and wine, of it ; beene a courtier from the biggen, 
to the night-cap : (as we may fay) and you, to offend in 
fuch a high point of ceremonie, as this ! and let your 
85 nuptialls want all markes of folemnitie ! How much plate 
haue you loft to day (if you had but regarded your 
profit) what guifts, what friends, through your meere 
rufticitie ? 

MoR. Madame 

90 Hav. Pardon mee, fir, I muft infinuate your errours to 
you. No gloues? no garters? no skarfes? no epithalamium} 
no mafque ? 

Daw. Yes, madame, I'll make an epithalamium^ I 

69 Mr.] Master Q . . . 73) 9 ^ skarfes] skarves i692 . . . ; scarves G 

74 let's] let us G 79 M.] Master Q 1717 . . . 83 : (as we may say)] 

, as we may say, G 



sc, vi] The filent Woman 65 

promis'd my miftris, I haue begunne it already : will your 
ladifliip heare it ? 95 

Hav. I, good lACK Daw. 

MoR. Will it pleafe your ladifhip command a chamber, 
and be priuate with your friend ? you fhall haue your 
choice of roomes, to retire to after: my whole houfe is 
yours. I know, it hath beene your ladifhips errand, into 100 
the city, at other times, how euer now you haue beene 
vnhappily diuerted vpon mee : but I fliall be loth to breake 
any honorable cuftome of your ladifhips. And therefore, 
good madame 

Epi. Come, you are a rude bride-groome, to entertayne 105 
ladies of honour in this fafhion. 

Cen. He is a rude groome, indeed. 

Try. By that light, you deferue to be grafted, and 
haue your homes reach from one fide of the Hand, to the 
other. Doe not mirtake me, fir, I but fpeake this, to giue no 
the ladies fome heart againe, not for any malice to you. 

MoR. Is this your Brauo, ladies ? 

Try. As god helpe me, if you vtter fuch another word, 
I'll take miftris bride in, and beginne to you, in a very fad 
cup, doe you fee ? Goe too, know your friends, and fuch, 115 
as loue you. 



A a III. Scene VII. [564] 

Clerimont, Morose, Trye-wit, Dayphine, La-Foole, 
Otter, M'^^- Otter, &c. 

BY your leaue, ladies. Doe you want any mufique ? ^/m/^w^ 
I haue brought you varietie of noyfes. Play, firs,^^^^ 
all of you. 

94 promis'd] promise 1G92 ... 99 retire to after] Of}i. to 1717 

100 ladiships] Ladishis Q 113 helpe] [shall] help G 114 sad] 

sap 1717 

MN. Mnsique of all sorts] om. all 1640 1692 H 



66 The filent Woman [act hi 

MOR. O, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot vpon me ! This 
5 day, I fliall be their anvile to worke on, they will grate me 
afunder. 'Tis worfe then the noyfe of a faw. 

CLE. No, they are haire, rofin, and guts. I can giue 
you the receipt. 

Trv. Peace, boyes. 
lo CLE. Play, I fay. 

Trv. Peace, rafcalls. You fee who's your friend now, 

fir ? Take courage, put on a martyrs refolution. Mocke 

downe all their attemptings, with patience. 'Tis but a day, 

and I would fuffer heroically. Should an afle exceed me 

15 in fortitude ? No. You betray your infirmitie with your 

hanging dull eares, and make them infult : beare vp 

La-Foole brauely, and conftantly. Looke you here, fir, what honour 

ouer is done you vnexpedted, by your nephew ; a wedding 

thevteate ^'^^^^^ come, and a Knight fewer before it, for the more 

20 reputation : and fine M""^- Otter, your neighbour, in the 

rump, or tayle of it. 

Mor. Is that Gorgon, that Medufa come? Hide me, 
hide me. 

Trv. I warrant you, fir, fliee will not transforme you. 

25 Looke vpon her with a good courage. Pray you enter- 

tayne her, and condud: your guefts in. No ? Miftris 

bride, will you entreat in the ladies ? your bride-groome is 

fo fliame-fac'd, here 

Epi. Will it pleafe your ladifliip, madame ? 
30 Hav. With the benefit of your companie, miftris. 
Epi. Seruant, pray you performe your duties. 
Daw. And glad to be commanded, miftris. 
Cen. How like you her wit. Mavis. 
Mav. Very prettily, abfolutely well. 
35 M^"- Ot. 'Tis my place. 

Mav. You fhall pardon me, miftris Otter. 
M"^^- Ot. Why I am a collegiate. 

20 Mrs. Otter] Mistris Otter Q ; M. Otter IQiO 26 guests] gues 

1^22 . . . nrr ; guest i739 



sc. vii] The Ji lent Woman 67 

Mav. But not in ordinary. 

M'^- Ot. But I am. 

Mav. Wee'll difpute that within. 40 

Cle. Would this had lafted a little longer. 

Trv. And that they had fent for the Heralds. Captayne 
Otter, what newes ? 

Ott. I haue brought my bull, beare, and horfe, in TheDrum, 
priuate, and yonder are the trumpetters without, and the "xru??ipets 
drum, gentlemen, fotmd. 

MOR. O, 6, 6. [565] 

Ott. And we will haue a roufe in each of 'hem, anon, 
for bold Britons, yfaith. 

MoR. O, 6, 6. 50 

All. Follow, follow, follow. 



^a 1 1 II. Scene I. 
Trve-wit, Clerimont, Davphine. 

T 7"\ 7'As there euer poore bride-groome fo tormented ? 
V V or man indeed? 

Cle. I haue not read of the like, in the chronicles 
of the land. 

Trv. Sure, hee cannot but goe to a place of reft, after 5 
all this purgatorie. 

Cle. He may prefume it, I thinke. 

Trv. The fpitting, the coughing, the laughter, the 
neefing, the farting, dauncing, noife of the mufique, and her 
mafculine, and lowd commanding, and vrging the whole 10 
family, makes him thinke he has married z.furie. 

Cle. And fliee carries it vp brauely. 

Trv. I, fliee takes any occafion to fpeake : that's the 
height on 't. 

40 that] it riB9 
Act IIIL Scene I.] Sc. I inchtdes I attd IL A Room in Morose's House. G 



68 The Jilent Woman [act iiii 

15 CLE. And how foberly Davphine labours to fatisfie 
him, that it was none of his plot ! 

Trv. And has almofl: brought him to the faith, i' the 
article. Here he comes. Where is he now ? what's become 
of him, Davphine? 
20 Dav. O, hold me vp a little, I fhall goe away i' the left 
elfe. Hee has got on his whole neft of night-caps, and 
lock'd himfelfe vp, i' the top o' the houfe, as high, as euer 
he can climbe from the noife. I peep'd in at a crany, and 
faw him fitting ouer a croflfe-beame o' the roofe, like him o' 
25 the fadlers horfe in Fleetftreet, vp-right : and he will fleepe 
there. 

Cle. But where are your collegiates? 
Dav. With-drawne with the bride in priuate. 
Trv. O, they are infl:ru6ting her i' the colledge-Grammar. 
30 If fliee haue grace with them, fliee knowes all their fecrets 
inftantly. 

Cle. Methinkes, the lady Havghty lookes well to day, 

for all my difpraife of her i' the morning. I thinke, I fliall 

come about to thee againe, Trve-wit. 

35 Trv. Beleeue it, I told you right. Women ought to 

repaire the lofles, time and yeeres haue made i' their 

features, with dreffings. And an intelligent woman, if fhee 

know by her felfe the leaft defed, will bee moft curious, to 

hide it : and it becomes her. If fliee be fliort, let her fit 

40 much, left when fhee ftands, fliee be thought to fit. If fhee 

haue an ill foot, let her weare her gowne the longer, and 

her fhoo the thinner. If a fat hand, and fcald nailes, let her 

carue the lefTe, and adt in gloues. If a fowre breath, let { 

[566] her neuer difcourfe fafting : and alwaies talke at her 

45 diftance. If fhee hai^e black and rugged teeth, let her offer 

the lefTe at laughter, efpecially if lliee laugh wide, and open. 

Cle. O, you fhall haue fome women, when they laugh, 

you would thinke they bray'd, it is fo rude, and 

Trv. I, and others, that will ftalke i' their gait like an 
50 EJirick, and take huge ftrides. I cannot endure fuch a 



sc. i] The filent Woman 69 

fight. I loue meafure i' the feet, and number i' the voice: 
they are gentleneffes, that oft-times draw no lefle then the 
face. 

Dav. How cam'fb thou to ftudie thefe creatures so 
exad:ly ? I would thou would'll: make me a proficient. 55 

Trv. Yes, but you muft leaue to liue i' your chamber 
then a month together vpon Amadis de Gazile, or Don 
QvixOTE, as you are wont ; and come abroad where the 
matter is frequent, to court, to tiltings, pubh'que fliowes, 
and feafts, to playes, and church fometimes : thither they 60 
come to filiew their new tyres too, to fee, and to be feene. 
In thefe places a man fhall find whom to loue, whom to 
play with, whom to touch once, whom to hold euer. The 
varietie arrefts his iudgement. A wench to pleafe a man 
comes not downe dropping from the feeling, as he lyes on 65 
his backe droning a tobacco pipe. He muft goe where 
fliee is. 

Dav. Yes, and be neuer the neere. 

Trv. Out heretique. That diffidence makes thee 
worthy it fliould bee so. 70 

CLE. He fayes true to you, Davphine. 

Dav. Why ? 

Trv. a man fhould not doubt to ouer-come any woman. 
Thinke he can vanquifii 'hem, and he fliall : for though 
they denie, their defire is to be tempted. PENELOPE her 75 
felfe cannot hold out long. Oflend^ you faw, was taken at 
laft. You muft perfeuer, and hold to your purpofe. They 
would folHcite vs, but that they are afraid. Howfoeuer, 
they wifli in their hearts we fliould foUicite them. Praife 
'hem, flatter 'hem, you flial neuer want eloquence, or truft: 80 
euen the chafteft delight to feele themfelues that way rub'd. 
With praifes you muft mixe kilTes too. If they take them, 
they'll take more. Though they ftriue, they would bee 
ouer-come. 

52 oft-times] oftentimes i692 .. . 6i shew] show i^/ 68 neere] 

near 1Q22 . . . ; neerer VV ; nearer G 69 diffidence] difference 1(j92 H 



70 The filent Woman [actiiii 

85 CLE. O, but a man muft beware of force. 

Trv. It is to them an acceptable violence, and has oft- 
times the place of the greateft courtefie. Shee that might 
haue beene forc'd, and you let her goe free without touch- 
ing, though fliee then feeme to thanke you, will euer hate 
90 you after : and glad i' the face, is afiTuredly fad at the heart. 
Cle. But all women are not to be taken alwaies. 
Trv. 'Tis true. No more then all birds, or all fiflies. 
If you appeare learned to an ignorant wench, or iocund to 
a fad, or witty to a foolifli, why fliee prefently begins to 
95 miftruft her felfe. You muft approch them i' their owne 
height, their owne line : for the contrary makes many that 
[567] feare to [ commit themfelues to noble and worthy fellowes, 
run into the imbraces of a rafcall. If fliee loue wit, giue 
verfes, though you borrow 'hem of a friend, or buy 'hem, to 
100 haue good. If valour, talke of your fword, and be frequent 
in the mention of quarrels, though you be ftaunch in fight- 
ing. If adiuitie, be feene o' your barbary often, or leaping 
ouer ftooles, for the credit of your back. If fliee loue good 
clothes or drefling, haue your learned counfell about you 
105 euery morning, your french taylor, barber, linnener, &c. 
Let your poulder, your glaflfe, and your combe, be your 
deareft acquaintance. Take more care for the ornament 
of your head, then the fafetie : and wifli the common-wealth 
rather troubled, then a haire about you. That will take 
no her. Then if fliee be couetous and crauing, doe you promife 
any thing, and performe fparingly : fo fliall you keepe her 
in appetite ftill. Seeme as you would giue, but be like 
a barren field that yeelds little, or vnlucky dice, to foolifli, 
and hoping gamefters. Let your gifts be flight, and 
ii5daintie, rather then pretious. Let cunning be aboue coft. 
Giue cherries at time of yeere, or apricots ; and fay they 
were fent you out o' the countrey, though you bought 'hem 
in Cheap-fide. Admire her tyres ; like her in all fafliions ; 

89 shee then seeme] then shee seeme IMO ... 91 alwaies] alwayes Q, \ 

always 1Q22 H\ all ways W G 115 pretious] precious Q... 



sc. i] The filent Woman 71 

compare her in euery habit to fome deitie ; inuent excellent 
dreames to flatter her, and riddles ; or, if fhee bee a great 130 
one, performe alwaies the fecond parts to her: like what 
fhee likes, praife whom fhe praifes, and faile not to make 
the houfhold and feruants yours, yea the whole family, and 
falute 'hem by their names : ('tis but light coft if you can 
purchafe 'hem fo) and make her phyfitian your penfioner, 125 
and her chiefe woman. Nor will it bee out of your gaine 
to make loue to her too, fo fliee follow, not vflier, her ladies 
pleafure. All blabbing is taken away, when fhee comes to 
be a part of the crime. 

Dav. On what courtly lap haft thou late flept, to come 130 
forth fo fudden and abfolute a courtling ? 

Trv. Good faith, I fhould rather queftion you, that are 
so harkning after thefe myfteries. I begin to fufpedt your 
diligence, Davphine. Speake, art thou in loue in earneft ? 

Dav. Yes by my troth am I : 'twere ill dilTembling 135 
before thee. 

Trv. With which of 'hem, I pray thee ? 

Dav. With all the collegiates. 

Cle. Out on thee. Wee'll keepe you at home, beleeue 
it, i' the ftable, and you be fuch a ftallion. 140 

Trv. No. I like him well. Men fhould loue wifely, 
and all women : fome one for the face, and let her pleafe 
the eye ; another for the skin, and let her pleafe the touch ; 
a third for the voice, and let her pleafe the eare ; and 
where the obieds mixe, let the fenfes fo too. Thou 145 
wouldft thinke it ftrange, if I fliould make 'hem all in loue 
with thee afore night ! 

Dav. I would fay thou had'ft the beft philtre \ the 
world, and couldft doe more then madame Medea, or 
Dodor Foreman. 150 

Trv. If I doe not, let me play the mounte-bank for my 
meate while I liue, and the bawd for my drinke. 

Dav. So be it, I fay. 

125 physitian] physician Q . . . 



72 The Jilent Woman [act iiii 



[568] A^ IIII. Scene II. 

Otter, Clerimont, Daw, Davphine, Morose, 
Trve-wit, La-Foole, M"- Otter. 

OLord, gentlemen, how my knights and I haue mill: you 
here! 
Cle. Why, Captaine, what feruice ? what feruice ? 
Ott. To fee me bring vp my bull, beare, and horfe to 
5 fight. 

Daw. Yes faith, the Captaine faies we fhall be his dogs 
to baite 'hem. 

Dav. a good imployment. 
Trv. Come on, let's fee a courfe then, 
^o La-F. I am afraid my coufin will be offended if fliee 
come. 

Ott. Be afraid of nothing. Gentlemen, I haue plac'd 

the drum and the trumpets, and one to giue 'hem the figne 

when you are ready. Here's my bull for my felfe, and my 

15 beare for fir lOHN Daw, and my horfe for fir Amorovs. 

Pray fet your foot to mine, and yours to his, and 

La-F. Pray god my coufin come not. 
Ott. Saint George, and faint Andrew, feare no 
coufins. Come, found, found. Et rauco firepuerunt cornua 
ao cantu. 

Trv. Well faid, Captaine, yfaith : well fought at the 
bull. 

Cle. Well held at the beare. 
Trv. Low, low, Captayne. 
25 Dav. O, the horfe has kickt off his dog alreadie. 
La-F. I cannot drinke it, as I am a Knight. 
Trv. Gods fo, off with his fpurres, fome-body. 
La-F. It goes againe my confcience. My coufin will bee 
angrie with it. 

9 a course] your course 1717 ... 27 Gods so] Ods so G 



sc. ii] The filent Woman 73 

Daw. I ha' done mine. 30 

Trv. You fought high and faire, fir lOHN. 

Cle. At the head. 

Dav. Like an excellent beare-dog. 

CLE. You take no notice of the bufinefle, I hope. 

Daw. Not a word, iir, you fee we are iouiall. 35 

Ott. Sir Amorovs, you muft not aequiuocate. It 
muft bee pull'd downe, for all my coufin. 

Cle. Sfoot, if you take not your drinke, they'll thinke 
you are difcontented with fome thing : you'll betray all, if 
you take the leaft notice. 40 

La-f. Not I, I'll both drinke, and talke then. 

Ott. You muft pull the horfe on his knees, fir 
AmoroVS : feare no coufins. lacta efi alea. 

Trv. O, now hee's in his vaine, and bold. The leaft 
hint giuen him of his wife now, will make him raile 45 
defperately. 

Cle. Speake to him of her. 

Trv. Doe you, and I'll fetch her to the hearing of it. [569] 

Dav. Captaine hee-OTTER, your fhee-OTTER is comm- 
ing, your wife. 5° 

Ott. Wife ! Buz. Titiuilitium. There's no fuch thing 
in nature. I confefle, gentlemen, I haue a cook, a laun- 
dreflfe, a houfe-drudge, that ferues my necefTary turnes, and 
goes vnder that title : But hee's an afTe that will be fo 
vxoriotis, to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the 55 
name dulls appetite. Here, replenifli againe : another bout. 
Wiues are nafty fluttifli animals. 

Dav. O, Captaine. 

Ott. As euer the earth bare, trihts verbis. Where's 
mafter Trve-WIT ? 60 

Daw. Hee's flipt afide, fir. 

Cle. But you muft drinke, and be iouiall. 

Daw. Yes, giue it me. 

La-F. And me, too. 

38 Sfoot] 'Sfoot i692 ... 48 her] hear 1711. . . 

F 



Mm. 



74 The Jilen Woman [act mi 

65 Daw. Let's be iouiall. 

La-f. As iouiall as you will. 

Ott. Agreed. Now you fliall ha' the beare, coufin, 
and fir lOHN Daw the horfe, and I'll ha' the bull ftill. 
Sound Tritons o' the Thames. Nunc efl bibendtim, nunc 

10 pede liber 

Morofe MoR. Villaines, murderers, fonnes of the earth, and 

fotLue: traitors, what doe you there? 

the Cle. O, now the trumpets haue wak'd him, we fhall 

trumpets , . . 

founding, haue his companie. 

75 Ott. a wife is a fciruy clogdogdo ; an vnlucky thing, 
a very forefaid beare-whelpe, without any good fafliion or 
breeding : mala beftia. 
His wife is Dav. Why did you marry one then, Captaine ? 

to'heare'^ Ott. A poxe 1 married with fixe thoufand pound, I. 

80 I was in loue with that. I ha' not kift my furie, thefe 
fortie weekes. 

Cle. The more to blame you, Captaine. 
Trv. Nay, miftris Otter, heare him a little firft. 
Ott. Shee has a breath worfe then my grand-mothers, 
^^profeSio. 

M'^- Ot. O treacherous lyar. Kiffe mee, fweet mafter 
Trve-wit, and proue him a flaundering knaue. 
Trv. I'll rather beleeue you, lady. 
Ott. And flie has a perruke, that's like a pound of 
90 hempe, made vp in flioo-thrids. 
M""'- Ot. O viper, mandrake ! 

Ott. a moft vile face ! and yet fliee fpends me fortie 

pound a yeere in mercury, and hogs-bones. All her teeth 

were made i' the Blacke-i^nVr^ : both her eye-browes i' 

95 the Strand, and her haire in Siluer-fireet. Euery part 

o' the towne ownes a peece of her. 

M'"'- Ot. I cannot hold. 

Ott. She takes her felfe afunder ftill when fhe goes to 

83 mistris] Mrs. 1640... IV 84 grand-mothers, /r^^/^J grand-mothers 
Profeao 1692 H 



sc. ii] The Jilent Woman 75 

bed, into fome | twentie boxes ; and about next day noone [570] 
is put together againe, like a great Germane clocke : and fo 100 
comes forth and rings a tedious larum to the whole houfe, 
and then is quiet againe for an houre, but for her quarters. 
Ha' you done me right, gentlemen ? 

M"- Ot. No, fir, I'll do you right with my quarters, shee falls 
with my quarters. %^,^l, 

Ott. O, hold, good Princefle. him. 

Trv. Sound, found. 

CLE. A battell, a battell. 

jyfrs. qy^ You notorious, ftinkardly beareward, do's my 
breath fmell? "o 

Ott. Vnder corredion, deare Princefle : looke to my 
beare, and my horfe, gentlemen. 

M"- Ot. Doe I want teeth, and eye-browes, thou bull- 
dog? 

Trv. Sound, found flill. "5 

Ott. No, I proteft, vnder corredtion 

M"- Ot. I, now you are vnder corredrion, you proteft : 
but you did not proteft before corredtion, fir. Thou 
IvDAS, to offer to betray thy Princefle ! I'll make thee an 
example 120 

MOR. I will haue no fuch examples in my houfe, lady Moro/e 

OtTFP defcends 

with a 
M"- Ot. Ah long/word. 

MOR. M"^^- Mary Ambree, your examples are danger- 
ous! Rogues, Hellhounds, Stentors, out of my dores, you 125 
fonnes of noife and tumult, begot on an ill May-^z.Y, or 
when the Gally-foift is a-floate to Wcfiminfier ! A trum- 
petter could not be conceiu'd, but then ! 

Day. What ailes you, fir ? 

MOR. They haue rent my roofe, walls, and all my i^o 
windores afunder, with their brazen throates. 

Try. Beft follow him, Dayphine. 

Day. So I will. 

MN. and beates him] and beates vpon him Q 124 Mrs.] Mistress G 



76 The Jilent Woman [act mi 

CLE. Where's Daw, and La-Foole ? 
135 Ott. They are both run away, fir. Good gentlemen, 
helpe to pacific my Princeffe, and fpeake to the great ladies 
for me. Now muft I goe lie with the beares this fortnight, 
and keepe out o' the way, till my peace be made, for this 
fcandale fliee has taken. Did you not fee my bull-head, 
^40 gentlemen ? 

CLE. Is 't not on, Captayne ? 

Trv. No : but he may make a new one, by that, is on. 

Ott. O, here 'tis. And you come ouer, gentlemen, and 

aske for ToM Otter, wee'U goe downe to Ratclijfe, and 

M5 haue a courfe yfaith : for all thefe difafters. There's bona 

fpes left. 

Trv. Away, Captaine, get off while you are well. 
Cle. I am glad we are rid of him. 

Trv. You had neuer beene, vnlefle wee had put his wife 
150 vpon him. His humour is as tedious at laft, as it was 
ridiculous at firft. 



[571] A 61 nil. Scene III. 

Havghty, M"^^- Otter, Mavis, Daw, La-Foole, 
Centavre, Epicoene, Trve-wit, Clerimont. 

-^ T-y XE wondred why you flireek'd fo, M'"^- Otter. 

y y M"- Ot. O god, madame, he came downe with 
a huge long naked weapon in both his hands, and look'd 
fo dreadfully ! Sure, hee's befide himfelfe. 
5 Mav. Why what made you there, miftris Otter ? 

M"- Ot. Alas, miftris Mavis, I was chaftifing my fub- 
ie6t, and thought nothing of him. 

Daw. Faith, miftris, you muft doe fo too. Learne to 

143 here 'tis] here it is G 
Act IIII. Scene IIL] Scene II includes III, IV, V, VI, and VII. A long open 
Gallery in the same. G 

I Mrs.] Mistress G 2 god] lord G 5, 6 mistris] Mrs. 1&^2 H 



sc. Ill] The filent Woman 77 

chaftife. Miftris Otter correds her husband fo, hee dares 
not fpeake, but vnder corredion. 10 

La-f. And with his hat off to her : 'twould doe you 
good to fee. 

Hav. In fadnefle 'tis good, and mature counfell : pradife 
it, Morose. I'll call you Morose ftill now, as I call 
Centavre, and Mavis : we foure will be all one. 15 

Cen. And you'll come to the coUedge, and Hue 
with vs ? 

Hav. Make him giue milke, and hony. 

Mav. Looke how you manage him at firft, you fliall 
haue him euer after, 20 

Cen. Let him allow you your coach, and foure horfes, 
your woman, your chamber-maid, your page, your gentle- 
man-vllier, your frcjich cooke, and foure groomes. 

Hav. And goe with vs, to Bed'lem, to the China houfes, 
and to the ExcJiange. 25 

Cen. It will open the gate to your fame. 

Hav. Here's Centavre has immortaliz'd her felfe, 
with taming of her wilde male, 

Mav. I, fliee has done the miracle of the kingdome. 

Epi. But ladies, doe you count it lawfull to haue fuch 30 
pluraltie of feruants, and doe 'hem all graces ? 

Hav. Why not ? why fliould women denie their fauours 
to men ? Are they the poorer, or the worfe ? 

Daw. Is the Thames the leiTe for the dyers water, 
miflris? 35 

La-F. Or a torch, for lighting many torches ? 

Trv. Well faid, La-foole ; what a new one he has 
got! 

Cen. They are empty lofles, women feare, in this kind. 

Hav. Belides, ladies fliould be mindfull of the approach 40 
of age, and let no time want his due vfe. The beft of our 
dales pafTe firffc. 

Mav. We are riuers, that cannot be call'd backe, 

22 your page,] your Page Q 



78 The fi lent Woman [act mi 

[572] madame : fliee that | now excludes her louers, may Hue to 
45 lie a forfaken beldame, in a frozen bed. 

Cen. 'Tis true, Mavis ; and who will wait on vs to 

coach then ? or write, or tell vs the newes then ? Make 

anagrammes of our names, and inuite vs to the cock-pit, 

and kifle our hands all the play-time, and draw their 

50 weapons for our honors ? 

Hav. Not one. 

Daw. Nay, my miftris is not altogether vn-intelligent 
of thefe things : here be in prefence haue tafted of her 
fauours. 
55 CLE. What a neighing hobby-horfe is this ! 

Epi. But not with intent to boaft 'hem againe, feruant. 
And haue you thofe excellent receits, madame, to keepe 
your felues from bearing of children ? 

Hav. O yes, Morose. How fliould we maintayne our 
60 youth and beautie, elfe ? Many births of a woman make 
her old, as many crops make the earth barren. 



Aa IIII. Scene IIII. 

Morose, Davphine, Trve-wit, Epicoene, 

Clerimont, Daw, Havghty, La-Foole, Centavre, 

Mavis, M'^- Otter, Trvsty. 

OMy curfed angell, that inftruded me to this fate ! 
Dav. Why, fir? 
MOR. That I fhould bee feduc'd by fo foolifh a deuill, 
as a barber will make ! 
5 Dav. I would I had beene worthy, fir, to haue partaken 
your counfell, you fliould neuer haue trufted it to fuch 
a minifter. 

MOR. Would I could redeeme it with the lofle of an eye 
(nephew) a hand, or any other member. 

9 (nephew)] , nephew, G 



sc. nil] The Jilent Woman 79 

Dav. Mary, god forbid, fir, that you fliould geld your 10 
felfe, to anger your wife. 

MoR. So it would rid me of her! and, that I did 
fupererogatorie penance, in a bellfry, at Wefimin^er-haW, 
i' the cock-pit, at the fall of a ftagge ; the tower-wharfe 
(what place is there elfe ?) Lo^idon-hridge, Paris-garden, 15 
Be/ms-ga.tG, when the noifes are at their height and lowdeft. 
Nay, I would fit out a play, that were nothing but fights at 
fea, drum, trumpet, and target ! 

Dav. I hope there fliall be no fuch need, fir. Take 
patience, good vncle. This is but a day, and 'tis well 20 
worne too now. 

MOR. O, 'twill bee (o for euer, nephew, I forefee it, for euer. 
Strife and tumult are the dowrie that comes with a wife. 

Trv. I told you fo, fir, and you would not beleeue me. 

MOR. Alas, doe not rub thofe wounds, mafl:er Trve-wit, 25 [573] 
to bloud againe : 'twas my negligence. Adde not afflidion 
to afflidion. I haue perceiu'd the effed: of it, too late, in 
madame Otter. 

Epi. How doe you, fir? 

MoR. Did you euer heare a more vnnecefi&ry queftion ? 30 
as if flie did not fee ! Why, I doe as you fee, Emprefife, 
Emprefi^e. 

Epi. You are not well, fir ! you looke very ill ! fome- 
thing has difl:empered you. 

MOR. O horrible, monftrous, impertinencies ! would not 35 
one of thefe haue feru'd ? doe you thinke, fir ? would not 
one of thefe haue feru'd ? 

Trv. Yes, fir, but thefe are but notes of female kind- 
nefife, fir : certaine tokens that fliee has a voice, fir. 

MOR. O, is't fo ? come, and 't be no otherwife what 40 

fay you ? 

13 bellfry] bel-fry Q ; belfry 1640 ... 14 -wharfe] -warf 1640 

15 (what . . . else)] —what . . . else ?— G 16 Belins] Bilings 1717 . . . ; 

Billinsgate G 22 so] om. Q 40 is't] is it G and 't be] and be 1692 H; 
an 't be G 



8o The filent Woman [act iiii 

Epi. How doe you feele your felfe, fir ? 

MOR. Againe, that ! 

Trv. Nay, looke you, fir : you would be friends with 

45 your wife vpon vn-confcionable termes, her filence 

Epi, They fay you are run mad, fir. 
MOR. Not for loue, I afllire you, of you ; doe you fee ? 
Epi. O lord, gentlemen ! Lay hold on him for gods 
fake : what flial I doe ? who's his phyfitian (can you tel) 
50 that knowes the ftate of his body befl:, that I might fend 
for him? Good fir, fpeake. I'll fend for one of my 
doctors elfe. 

MOR. What, to poyfon me, that I might die inteftate, 
and leaue you poflfeft of all ? 
55 Epi. Lord, how idly he talkes, and how his eyes 
fparkle ! He lookes green about the temples ! Doe you 
fee what blue fpots he has ? 
Cle. I, it's melancholy. 

Epi. Gentlemen, for heauens fake counfell me. Ladies ! 
60 Seruant, you haue read Pliny, and Paracelsvs : Ne're 
a word now to comfort a poore gentlewoman ? Ay me ! 
what fortune had I to marry a diftrailed man ? 

Daw. I'll tell you, miftris 

Trv. How rarely fliee holds it vp 1 
65 MOR. What meane you, gentlemen ! 
Epi. What will you tell me, feruant ? 
Daw. The difeafe in Greeke is called Mayta, in Latitte, 
Infania^ Ftiror, vel Ecftafts melancholica, that is, Egrefsio, 
when a man ex melancJiolico, etiadit fanatiais . 
70 MOR. Shall I haue a ledure read vpon me aliue ? 

Daw. But he may be but Pkrenetiais, yet, miftris ? and 

Phrenetis is only delirium^ or fo 

Epi. I, that is for the difeafe, feruant : but what is this 
to the cure ? we are fure inough of the difeafe. 
75 MoR. Let me goe. 

49 physitian] physician Q. ,. (can you tel)] , can you tell, G 58 it's] 

'tis WG 



SC. iiii] The filent Woman 8i 

Trv. Why, wee'll intreat her to hold her peace, fir. [574] 

MOR. O, no. Labour not to ftop her. Shee is like 
a conduit-pipe, that will gufli out with more force, when 
fhee opens againe. 

Hav. I'll tell you, Morose, you muft talke diuinitie to 80 
him altogether, or morall philofophie. 

La-f. I, and there's an excellent booke of morall philo- 
fophie, madame, of Raynard the foxe, and all the beafts, 
call'd, DONES philofophie. 

Cen. There is, indeed, fir Amorovs La-FOOLE. 85 

Mor. O miferie ! 

La-f. I haue read it, my lady Centavre, all ouer to 
my coufin, here. 

M"- Ot. I, and 'tis a very good booke as any is, of the 
Modernes. 90 

Daw. Tut, hee muft haue Seneca read to him, and 
Plvtarch, and the Ancients ; the Modernes are not for 
this difeafe. 

Cle. Why, you difcommended them,toOj to day, fir lOHN. 

Daw. I, in fome cafes : but in thefe they are beft, and 95 
ArISTOTLES EtJiicks. 

Mav. Say you fo, fir lOHN ? I thinke you are de- 
ceiu'd : you tooke it vpon truft. 

Hav. Where's Trvsty, my woman? I'll end this 
difference. I pr'y-thee, OTTER, call her. Her father and 100 
mother were both mad, when they put her to me. 

MOR. I thinke fo. Nay, gentlemen, I am tame. This 
is but an exercife, I know, a marriage ceremonie, which 
I muft endure. 

Hav. And one of 'hem (I know not which) was cur'd 105 
with the Sick-mans faliie ; and the other with Greenes 
groates-worth of wit. 

Trv. a very cheape cure, madame. 

Hav. I, it's very faefible. 

81 him] her ^ 103 I know,] ^w. comma ^ 105 (I know not which)] 
, I know not which, G 



82 The Jilent Woman [act iiii 

no M"- Ot. My lady call'd for you, miftris Trvsty : you 
muft decide a controuerfie. 

Hav. O Trvsty, which was it you faid, your father, or 
your mother, that was cur'd with the Sicke-inans [alue'i 
Trvs. My mother, madame, with ^\& fahie. 
115 Try. Then it was the Sicke-zvomans falue. 

Trvs. And my father with the Groates-worth of wit. 
But there was other meanes vs'd : we had a Preacher that 
would preach folke afleepe ftill ; and fo they were pre- 
fcrib'd to goe to church, by an old woman that was their 

120 phyfitian thrife a weeke 

Epi. To fleepe ? 

Trvs. Yes forfooth : and euery night they read them- 
felues afleepe on thofe bookes, 

Epi. Good faith, it ftands with great reafon. I would 
125 I knew where to procure thofe bookes. 
Mor. Oh. 
[575] La-f. I can helpe you with one of 'hem, miftris MO- 
ROSE, the groats-worth of zvit. 

Epi. But I fhall disfurnifli you, fir Amorovs : can you 
130 fpare it? 

La-f. O, yes, for a weeke, or fo ; I'll reade it my felfe 
to him. 

Epi. No, I mufl doe that, fir : that muft be my office. 
MOR. Oh, oh ! 
135 Epi. Sure, he would doe well inough, if he could fleepe, 
Mor. No, I fliould doe well inough, if you could 
fleepe. Haue I no friend that will make her drunke ? or 
giue her a little ladammi ? or opium ? 

Try. Why, fir, fliee talkes ten times worfe in her 
140 fleepe. 

Mor. How ! 

Cle. Doe you not know that, fir? neuer ceafes all 
night. 

117 other] another J739 120 physitian] physician Q... 129 shall] 

wall lloQ 133 office] ffice Q 142 Doe you not know] oni. not J739 



sc. iiii] The Jilent Woman 83 

Trv. And fnores like a porcpifce. 

MOR. O, redeeme me, fate, redeeme me, fate. For how 145 
many caufes may a man be diuorc'd, nephew ? 

Dav. I know not truely, fir. 

Trv. Some diuine muft refolue you in that, fir, or 
canon-Lawyer. 

MOR. I will not reft, I will not thinke of any other 1=0 
hope or comfort, till I know. 

Cle. Alas, poore man. 

Trv. You'll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pur- 
fue this. 

Hav. No, wee'll let him breathe, now, a quarter of an 155 
houre, or fo. 

Cle. By my faith, a large truce. 

Hav. Is that his keeper, that is gone with him ? 

Daw. It is his nephew, madame. 

La-f. Sir Davphine, Evgenie. 160 

Cen. He lookes like a very pittiful knight 

Daw. As can be. This marriage, has put him out 
of all. 

La-F. He has not a penny in his purfe, madame 

Daw. He is readie to crie all this day. 165 

La-F. a very fharke, he fet me i'the nicke t'other night 
at primer 0. 

Trv. How thefe fwabbers talke ! 

Cle. I, Otters wine has fwell'd their humours aboue 
a fpring-tide. 170 

Hav. Good Morose, let's goe in againe. I like your 
couches exceeding well : wee'll goe lie, and talke there. 

Epl I wait on you, madame. 

Trv. 'Slight, I wil haue 'hem as filent as Signes, & 
their pofts too, e're I ha' done. Doe you heare, lady- 175 
bride ? I pray thee now, as thou art a noble wench, con- 
tinue this difcourfe of DAVPHINE within : but praife him 

160 Davphine,] om. comma F{F^ ... 174 'Slight] sligh IQiO 

175 posts] post 1^0 ... 



84 The filent Woman [act iiii 

exceedingly. Magnifie him with all the height of affedion 

thou canft. (I haue fome purpofe in't) and but beate off 

180 thefe two rookes, Iack Daw, and his fellow, with any 

difcontentment hither, and I'll honour thee for euer. 

Epi. I was about it, here. It angred mee to the foule, 

[576] to heare 'hem | beginne to talke fo malepert. 

Trv. Pray thee performe it, and thou win'ft mee an 
idolater to thee, euerlafting. 

Epi. Will you goe in, and heare me doe it ? 
Trv. No, I'll ftay here. Driue 'hem out of your com- 
panie, 'tis all I aske : which cannot bee any way better done, 
then by extolling Davphine, whom they haue fo flighted, 
190 Epi. I warrant you : you fliall exped one of 'hem pre- 
fently. 

CLE. What a caft of kaftrils are thefe, to hawke after 
ladies, thus ? 

Trv. I, and ftrike at fuch an eagle as Davphine. 
195 Cle. He will be mad, when we tell him. Here he 
comes. 



A a IIII. Scene V. 
Clerimont, Trve-wit, Davphine, Daw, La-Foole. 

OSir, you are welcome. 
Trv. Where's thine vncle? 
Dav. Run out o' dores in's night-caps, to talke with 
a Cafuift about his diuorce. It workes admirably. 
5 Trv. Thou would'ft ha' faid fo, and thou had 'ft beene 
here ! The ladies haue laught at thee, moft comically^ fince 
thou wentft, Davphine. 

Cle. And askt, if thou wert thine vncles keeper ? 
Trv. And the brace of Babouns anfwer'd, yes ; and 
10 faid thou wert a pittifull poore fellow, and did'ft Hue vpon 

1 79 (I haue . . . in't)] — I have . . . in't : — G 
3 in's] in his G 



sc. v] The filent Woman 85 

pofts: and had'ft nothing but three futes of apparel! , and 
fome few beneuolences that lords ga' thee to foole to 'hem, 
and fwagger. 

Dav. Let me not Hue, I'll beate 'hem. I'll binde 'hem 
both to grand Madames bed-poftes, and haue 'hem bayted 15 
with monkeyes. 

Trv. Thou flialt not 'need, they fliall be beaten to thy 
hand, Davphine. I haue an execution to ferue vpon 
'hem, I warrant thee fliall ferue : trull my plot. 

Dav. I, you haue many plots ! So you had one, to 20 
make all the wenches in loue with me. 

Trv. Why, if I doe not yet afore night, as neere as 
'tis ; and that they doe not euery one inuite thee, and be 
ready to fcratch for thee : take the morgage of my wit. 

Cle. 'Fore god, I'll be his witnefle ; thou flialt haue it, 25 
Davphine : thou flialt be his foole for euer, if thou 
doeft not. 

Trv. Agreed. Perhaps 'twill bee the better eftate. 
Doe you obferue this gallerie ? or rather lobby, indeed ? 
Here are a couple of fludies, at each end one : here will 30 
I a6t fuch a tragi-comcsdy betweene the Gtielphcs, and the 
Ghibellines, Daw and La-Foole — which of 'hem comes out 
firft, will I I feize on : (you two fhall be the chorus behind [577] 
the arras, and whip out betweene the a£is, and fpeake.) 
If I doe not make 'hem keepe the peace, for this remnant 35 

of the day, if not of the yeere, I haue faild once 1 heare 

Daw comming: Hide, and doe not laugh, for gods fake. 

Daw. Which is the way into the garden, trow ? 

Trv. O, Iack Daw ! I am glad I haue met with you. 
In good faith, I muflr haue this matter goe no furder be- 4° 
tweene you. I muft ha' it taken vp. 

Daw. What matter, fir? Betweene whom ? 

Trv. Come, you difguife it — Sir Amorovs and you. 

12 lords] the lords 1640 ... 24 scratch] search 1640 . . . 1717 

28 the better] his better M 33j 34 ( ) '^ substitutes dashes 40 furder] 
further 1640 . . . 



86 Thefilent Woman [act iiii 

If you loue me, Iack, you fliall make vfe of your philo- 

45 fophy now, for this once, and deliuer me your fword. This 
is not the wedding the Centavres were at, though there 
be a fliee-one here. The bride has entreated me I will fee 
no bloud fhed at her bridall, you faw her whifper me ere- 
while. 

50 Daw. As I hope to finifli Tacitvs, I intend no murder. 
Trv. Doe you not wait for fir Amorovs ? 
Daw. Not I, by my knight-hood. 
Trv, And your fchollerfliip too ? 
Daw. And my fchollerfliip too. 

65 Trv. Goe to, then I returne you your fword, and 
aske you mercy ; but put it not vp, for you will be 
aflaulted. I vnderftood that you had apprehended it, and 
walkt here to braue him ; and that you had held your life 
contemptible, in regard of your honor. 

60 Daw. No, no, no fuch thing I alTure you. He and 
I parted now, as good friends as could be. 

Trv. Truft not you to that vifor. I faw him fmce 
dinner with another face : I haue knowne many men in 
my time vex'd with lofTes, with deaths, and with abufes, 

65 but fo offended a wight as fir AmorOVS, did I neuer fee, 
or read of. For taking away his guefls, fir, to day, that's 
the caufe : and hee declares it behind your backe, with fuch 

threatnings and contempts He faid to Davphine, you 

were the errandfl afle 

70 Daw. I, he may fay his pleafure. 

Trv. And fweares, you are fo protefled a coward, that 
hee knowes you will neuer doe him any manly or fingle 
right, and therefore hee will take his courfe. 

Daw, I'll giue him any fatisfadion, fir but fighting. 

75 Trv. I, fir, but who knowes what fatisfadion hee'll 
take? bloud he thirfts for, and bloud he will haue: and 
where-abouts on you he will haue it, who knowes, but 
himfelfe ? 

69 errandst] errantst 2692 . . . J7i7; arrant'st W .. . 



sc. v] The filent Woman 87 

Daw. I pray you, mafter Trve-wit, be you a mediator. 
Trv. Well, fir, conceale your felfe then in this ftudie, He puts 
till I returne. Nay, you muft bee content to bee lock'd "'" ^^' 
in : for, for mine owne reputation I would not haue you 
feene to receiue a publique difgrace, while I haue the 
matter in managing. Gods fo, here hee comes : keepe 
your I breath clofe, that hee doe not heare you figh. In 85 [578] 
good faith, fir Amorovs, hee is not this way, I pray you 
bee mercifull, doe not murder him ; hee is a chriftian as 
good as you : you are arm'd as if you fought a reuenge on 
all his race. Good Davphine, get him away from this 
place. I neuer knew a mans choller fo high, but hee would 90 
fpeake to his friends, hee would heare reafon. Iack Daw, 
Iack Daw ! a-fleepe ? 

Daw. Is he gone, mafter Trve-WIT ? 
Trv. I, did you heare him ? 

Daw. O god, yes. 95 

Trv. What a quick eare feare has ? 
Daw. And is he so arm'd, as you fay ? 
Trv. Arm'd ? did you euer fee a fellow, fet out to take 
poflTeflion ? 

Daw. I, fir. ,00 

Trv. That may giue you fome light, to conceiue of 
him : but 'tis nothing to the principall. Some falfe brother 
i' the houfe has furnifli'd him ftrangely. Or, if it were out 
o' the houfe, it was Tom Otter. 

Daw. Indeed, hee's a Captayne, and his wife is his 105 
kinfwoman. 

Trv. Hee has got fome-bodies old two-hand-fword, to 
mow you off at the knees. And that fword hath fpawn'd 
fuch a dagger! but then he is fo hung with pikes, hal- 
berds, peitronells, calliuers, and muskets, that he lookes no 
like a luftice of peace's hall : a man of two thoufand 
a yeere, is not fefs'd at fo many weapons, as he has on. 

88 a reuenge] revenge 1717 ... 91 Iack Daw, IacK Daw !] Iack 

Daw, Iack ! 1640 ... 



88 The filent Woman [act iiii 

There was neuer fencer challeng'd at fo many feuerall 

foiles. You would think hee meant to murder all Saint 

"5 PVLCHRES parifli. If hee could but viduall himfelfe for 

halfe a yeere, in his breeches, hee is fufficiently arm'd 

to ouer-runne a countrie. 

Daw. Good lord, what meanes he, fir ! I pray you, 

mafter Trve-wit, be you a mediator. 

120 Trv. Well, rU trie if he will be appeas'd with a leg or 

an arm, if not, you muft die once. 

Daw. I would be loth to loofe my right arme, for 

writing madrigalls. 

Trv. Why, if he will be fatisfied with a thumb, or 

125 a little finger, all's one to me. You muft thinke, I'll doe 

my beft. 

He puts TiK^. Good fir, doe. 

nun vp 

againe, Cle. What haft thou done ? 

7aVJf^th. Trv. He will let me doe nothing, man, he do's all afore 

130 me, he offers his left arme. 

Cle. His left wing, for a Tack Daw. 

Dav. Take it, by all meanes. 

Trv. How ! Maime a man for euer, for a left ? what 

a confcience haft thou ? 

135 Dav. 'Tis no lofte to him : he has no employment for 

his armes, but to eate fpoone-meat. Befide, as good 

maime his body as his reputation. 

[579] Trv. He is a fcholler, and a Wit and yet he do's not 

thinke fo. But he loofes no reputation with vs, for we all 

140 refolu'd him an aiTe before. To your places againe. 

Cle. I pray thee, let me be in at the other a little. 

Trv. Looke, you'll fpoile all : thefe be euer your 

tricks. 

Cle. No, but I could hit of fome things that thou 

145 wilt miife, and thou wilt fay are good ones. 

Trv. I warrant you. I pray forbeare, I'll leaue it off, elfe. 

132 Dav.] Daiv, Q 136 good] goods Q 139 all resolu'J] all are 

resolved 1717 



sc. v] The Jilent. Woman 89 

Dav. Come away, Clerimont. 

Trv. Sir Amorovs ! 

La-f. Mafter Trve-wit. 

Trv. Whether were you going ? 150 

La-f. Downe into the courts to make water. 

Trv. By no meanes, fir, you fliall rather tempt your 
breeches. 

La-f. Why, fir ? 

Trv. Enter here, if you loue your life. 155 

La-f. Why ! why ! 

Trv. Queftion till your throat bee cut, doe : dally till 
the enraged foule find you. 

La-f. Who 's that ? 

Trv. Daw it is : will you in ? 160 

La-f. I, I, I'll in : what 's the matter ? 

Trv. Nay, if hee had beene coole inough to tell vs that, 
there had beene fome hope to attone you, but he feemes fo 
implacably enrag'd. 

La-f. 'Slight, let him rage. I'll hide my felfe. 165 

Trv. Doe, good fir. But what haue you done to him 
within, that fhould prouoke him thus? you haue broke 
fome left vpon him, afore the ladies 

La-f. Not I, neuer in my life, broke ieft vpon any 
man. The bride was praifing fir Davphine, and he went 170 
away in fnuffe, and I followed him, vnlefTe he took offence 
at me, in his drinke ere while, that I would not pledge all 
the horfe full. 

Trv. By my faith, and that may bee, you remember 
well: but hee walkes the round vp and downe, through 175 
euery roome o' the houfe, with a towell in his hand, crying, 
where 's La-Foole? who faw La-Foole? and when 
Davphine, and I, demanded the caufe, wee can force no 
anfwere from him, but (6 reuenge, how fweet art thou ! I 
will fl:rangle him in this towell) which leads vs to coniedture, iSo 

171 T] cm. 1768 179, 180 () G subsiituies dashes 

G 



90 The filent Woman [act iiii 

that the maine caufe of his furie is for bringing your 
meate to day, with a towell about you, to his difcredit. 

La-F. Like inough. Why, and he be angrie for that, 
I'll ftay here, till his anger be blowne ouer. 
185 Trv. a good becomming refolution, fir. If you can 
put it on o' the fudden. 

La-f. Yes, I can put it on. Or, I'll away into the 

country prefently. 

[580] Trv. How will you get out o' the houfe, fir? Hee 

190 knowes you are i' the houfe, and hee'll watch you this 

fe'n-night but hee'll haue you. Hee'll out-wait a fargeant 

for you. 

La-F. Why, then I'll flay here. 

Trv. You muft thinke, how to viduall your felfe in 
195 time, then. 

La-F. Why, fweet mafter Trve-wit, will you entreat 
my coufin Otter, to fend me a cold venifon pafty, a bottle 
or two of wine, and a chamber pot. 

Trv. a ftoole were better, fir, of fir A-IAX his inuention. 
300 La-F. I, that will be better indeed : and a pallat to 
lie on. 

Trv. O, I would not aduife you to fleepe by any 
meanes. 

La-F. Would you not, fir? why, then I will not. 

205 Trv. Yet, there 's another feare 

La-F. Is there, fir ? What is't ? 

Trv. No, he cannot breake open this dore with his foot, 
fure. 

La-F. I'll fet my backe againfl: it, fir. I haue a good 
210 backe. 

Trv. But, then, if he fhould batter. 
La-F. Batter ! if he dare, I'll haue an adlion of batt'ry, 
againft him. 

Trv. Caft you the worft. He has fent for poulder 

191 sargeant] Seriant Q; serjeaat 2640 .. . 201 you] thee W 

a 06 Is there, sir ?] om. sir W G 



sc. v] The filent Woman 91 

alreadie, and what he will doe with it, no man knowes : 215 
perhaps blow vp the corner o' the houfe, where he fufpedis 
you are. Here he comes, in quickly. I proteft, fir lOHN Hefaines, 
Daw, he is not this way : what will you doe ? before god, ^^^ °"" 
you flmll hang no petarde here. I'll die rather. Will you prefent.to 

J ^ J^ J fright the 

not take my word ? I neuer knew one but would be other, who 
fatisfied. Sir Amorovs, there 's no ftanding out. He has l-'J"^ ?" ^" 

' ° hide him- 

made a petarde of an old brafle pot, to force your dort, felfe, 
Thinke vpon fome fatisfadlion, or termes, to offer him. 

La-f. Sir, I'll giue him any fatisfadion. I dare giue 
any termes. 225 

Trv. You'll leaue it to me, then ? 

La-F. I, fir. I'll ftand to any conditions. 

Trv. How now, what thinke you, firs? wer't not -^<? ^^-^^^ 

a difficult thing to determine, which of thefe two fear'd moft. cierivwnt, 

CLE. Yes, but this feares the braueft : the other a '^"'^ ,, . 

Dauphtne. 

whiniling daftard, Iack Daw ! but La-FooLE, a braue 
heroique coward ! and is afraid in a great looke, and a ilout 
accent. I like him rarely. 

Trv. Had it not beene pitty, thefe two fliould ha' 
beene conceal'd ? 235 

CLE. Shall I make a motion ? 

Trv. Briefly. For I muft ftrike while 'tis hot. 

Cle. Shall I goe fetch the ladies to the catafirophe'i 

Trv. Vmh ? I, by my troth. 

Dav. By no mortall meanes. Let them continue in 240 
the ftate of ignorance, and erre flill : thinke 'hem wits, and 
fine fellow es, as they haue done. 'Twere finne to reforme 
them. 

Trv. Well, I will haue 'hem fetch'd, now I thinke on't, 
for a priuate purpofe of mine : doe, Clerimont, fetch 245 
'hem, and difcourfe to 'hem all that 's pafl, and bring 'hem 
into the gallery here. 

MN. He faines . . .] cm. G, hut several directions of his 07vn are substituted : 
\Thrusts in La-Foole ajtd shuts the door.'] [Speaks through the key-hole.'\ 
239 Vmh?J Umph! G 244 on't] on it M 

G 2 



92 The Jilent Woman [act hi 

[581] Dav. This is thy extreme vanitie, now: thou think'ft 
thou wert vndone, if euery ieit thou mak'ft were not 
250 publifli'd. 

Trv. Thou flialt fee, how vniuft thou art, prefently. 

CleRimont, fay it was Davphine's plot. Truft me not, 

if the whole drift be not for thy good. There 's a carpet i' 

the next roome, put it on, with this fcarfe ouer thy face, 

355 and a cufliion o' thy head, and bee ready when I call 

Amorovs. Away loHN Daw. 

Daw. What good newes, fir. 

Trv. Faith, I haue followed, and argued with him hard 
for you. I told him, you were a knight, and a fcholler ; 
260 and that you knew fortitude did conlift magis patiendo 
quam facie ndo, magis fere ndo quam feriendo. 
Daw. It doth fo indeed, fir. 

Trv. And that you would fuffer, I told him : fo, at firft 
he demanded, by my troth, in my conceipt, too much. 
265 Daw. What was it, fir. 

Trv. Your vpper lip, and fixe o' your fore-teeth. 
Daw. 'Twas vnreafonable. 

Trv. Nay, I told him plainely, you could not fpare 
'hem all. So after long argument [pro & con^ as you know) 
270 I brought him downe to your two butter-teeth, and them 
he would haue. 

Daw. O, did you fo ? why, he fliall haue 'hem. 

Trv. But he fhall not, fir, by your leaue. The con- 

clufion is this, fir, becaufe you fliall be very good friends 

275 hereafter, and this neuer to bee remembered, or vp-braided ; 

befides, that he may not boaft, he has done any fuch thing 

to you in his owne perfon : hee is to come here in difguife, 

giue you fiue kicks in priuate, fir, take your fword from 

you, and lock you vp in that ftudie, during pleafure. 

280 Which will be but a little while, wee'll get it releas'd 

prefently. 

Daw. Fiue kicks ? he fliall haue fixe, fir, to be friends. 
269 {J>ro & con, as you know)] , pro et con, as you know, G 



sc. v] The filent Woman 93 

Trv. Beleeue mee, you fliall not ouer-fhoot your felfe, 
to fend him that word by me. 

Daw. Dehuer it, fir. He fhall haue it with all my heart, 285 
to be friends. 

Trv. Friends? Nay, and he fhould not be fo, and 
heartily too, vpon thefe termes, he fhall haue me to enemie 
while I Hue. Come, fir, beare it brauely. 

Daw. O god, fir, 'tis nothing. 290 

Trv. True. What 's fixe kicks to a man, that reads 
Seneca ? 

Daw. I haue had a hundred, fir. 

Trv. Sir Amorovs. No fpeaking one to another, or 
rehearfing old matters. 295 

Daw. One, two, three, foure, fine. I proteft, fi.r Dauphim 
Amorovs, you fliall haue fixe. %rih, and 

Trv. Nay, I told you fhould not talke. Come, m\x^ kicks Mm. 
him fix, & he will needs. Your fword. Now returne to 
your fafe cuftody : you fliall prefently meet afore the ladies, 300 

and be the dearefl friends one to another Giue me | the [532] 

fcarfe, now, thou fhalt beat the other barefaced. Stand by, 
fir Amorovs. 

La-F. What 's here ? A fword. 

Trv. I cannot helpe it, without I fliould take the 305 
quarrell vpon my felfe : here he has fent you his fword 

La-F. I'll receiue none on 't. 

Trv. And he wills you to faften it againfl a wall, and 
breake your head in some few feuerall places againft the 
hilts. 310 

La-F. I will not: tell him roundly. I cannot endure 
to filed my owne bloud. 

Trv. Will you not ? 

285 all my heart] cm. all 1111 298 I told you should] I told you, 

you should lQd2 . . . 302 Stand by,] Stand by : W G This punctuation 

makes the speech apply to Dauphine rather than La-Foole. G inserts at the 
colon: [^Dauphine retires, and Truewit goes to the other closet, and releases 
La-FooW] 309 places] place IGiO 



94 The Jilent Woman 

La-F. No. I'll beat it againft a faire flat wall, if that 
315 will fatisfie him : If not, he fliall beat it himfelfe, for 
Amorovs. 

Trv. Why, this is ftrange ftarting off, when a man 
vnder-takes for you ! I offered him another condition : 
Will you ftand to that ? 
320 La-F. I, what is 't. 

Trv. That you will be beaten, in priuate. 
La-F. Yes. I am content, at the blunt. 
Trv. Then you muft fubmit your felfe to bee hood- 
wink'd in this skarfe, and bee led to him, where hee will 
325 take your fword from you, and make you beare a blow, 
ouer the mouth, gules ^ and tweakes by the nofe, fans 
mimhre. 

La-F. I am content. But why muft I be blinded ? 
Trv. That's for your good, fir: becaufe, if hee fhould 
330 grow infolent vpon this, and publifh it hereafter to your 
difgrace (which I hope he will not doe) you might fweare 
fafely and proteft, hee neuer beat you, to your knowledge. 
La-F. O, I conceiue. 

Trv. I doe not doubt, but you'll be perfed good friends 
335 vpon 't, and not dare to vtter an ill thought one of another, 
in future. 

La-F. Not I, as god helpe me, of him. 

Trv. Nor he of you, fir. If he fliould Come, fir. 

All hid, fir lOHN. 

Dauphine La-f. Oh, fir lOHN, fir lOHN. Oh, 6-6-6-6-6-Oh 

TweZT Trv. Good, fir Iohn, leaue tweaking, you'll blow his 

him. nofe off. 'Tis fir Iohn's pleafure, you fliould retire into 

the ftudie. Why, now you are friends. All bitternefle 

betweene you, I hope, is buried ; you fliall come forth by 

345 and by, Damon & Pythias vpon 't : and embrace with all 

the ranknefie of friendfliip that can be. I truft, wee fliall 

haue 'hem tamer i' their language hereafter. Davphine, 

I worfliip thee. Gods will, the ladies haue furpris'd vs ! 

341 Good, Sir John] Good Sir John Q . ., 



The filent Woman 95 



A Si nil. Scene VI. [583] 

Havghty, Centavre, Mavis, M'«- Otter, Epicoene, Hauing 

TRVSTY, DAVPHINE, TrVE-WIT, &C. ^parTofL 

^_^ ^ pajl fcene, 

y^Entavre, how our ludgements were impos'd on hy aboue. 

V^^ thefe adulterate knights ! 

Cen. Nay, madame, Mavis was more deceiu'd then 
we, 'twas her commendation vtter'd 'hem in the coUedge. 

Mav. I commended but their wits, madame, and their 5 
braueries. I neuer look'd toward their valours. 

Hav. Sir Davphine is valiant, and a wit too, it 
feemes ? 

Mav. And a brauerie too. 

Hav. Was this his proiect? 10 

M"- Ot. So mafter Clerimont intimates, madame. 

Hav. Good Morose, when you come to the colledge, 
will you bring him with you ? He feemes a very perfed: 
gentleman. 

Epi. He is fo, madame, beleeue it. 15 

Cen. But when will you come, Morose ? 

Epi. Three or foure dayes hence, madame, when I haue 
got mee a coach, and horfes ? 

Hav. No, to morrow, good MOROSE, Centavre fhall 
fend you her coach. 20 

Mav. Yes faith, doe, and bring fir Davphine with you. 

Hav. Shee has promis'd that, Mavis. 

Mav. He is a very worthy gentleman, in his exteriors, 
madame. 

Hav. I, he fhowes he is iudiciall in his clothes, 25 

Cen. And yet not fo fuperlatiuely neat as fome, 
madame, that haue their faces fet in a brake ! 

Hav. I, and haue euery haire in forme ! 

27 brake] barke miO . . . 1717 



96 The filent Woman [act iiii 

Mav. That weare purer linnen then our felues, and pro- 
30 feffe more neatnefle, then the french hermaphrodite ! 

Epi. I ladies, they, what they tell one of vs, haue told a 
thoufand, and are the only theeues of our fame : that 
thinke to take vs with that perfume, or with that lace, and 
laugh at vs vn-confcionably when they haue done. 
35 Hav. But, fir Davphines carelefneffe becomes him. 
Cen. I could loue a man, for fuch a nofe ! 
Mav. Or fuch a leg ! 

Cen. He has an exceeding good eye, madame ! 
Mav. And a very good lock ! 
40 Cen, Good Morose, bring him to my chamber firfl:. 
M"^^- Ot. Pleafe your honors, to meet at my houfe, 
madame ? 
[584] Trv. See, how they eye thee, man ! they are taken, 
I warrant thee. 
45 Hav. You haue vnbrac'd our brace of knights, here, 
mafter Trve-wit. 

Trv. Not I, madame, it was fir Davphines ingine : who, 
if he haue disfurnifli'd your ladifliip of any guard, or feruice 
by it, is able to make the place good againe, in himfelfe. 
6© Hav. There 's no fufpition of that, fir. 

Cen. God fo, Mavis, Havghty is kiffing. 
Mav. Let vs goe too, and take part. 
Hav. But I am glad of the fortune (befide the dif- 
couerie of two fuch emptie caskets) to gaine the knowledge 
55 of fo rich a mine of vertue, as fir Davphine. 

Cen. We would be al glad to ftile him of our friend- 
fliip, and fee him at the colledge. 

Mav. He cannot mixe with a fweeter focietie, I'll pro- 
phefie, and I hope he himfelfe will thinke fo. 
60 Dav. I fliould be rude to imagine otherwife, lady. 

Trv. Did not I tell thee, Davphine ? Why, all their 
adlions are gouerned by crude opinion, without reafon or 

38 exceeding] excellent 1'7Q8 39 lock] look H 1739 1768 47 ingine] 

inginer Q 48 he haue] you have 1717 50 suspition] suspicion Q 



sc. vi] The /i lent Woman 97 

caufe ; they know not why they doe any thing : but as 
they are inform 'd, beleeue, iudge, praife, condemne, loue, 
hate, and in aemulation one of another, doe all thefe things 65 
alike. Onely, they haue a naturall inclination fwayes 'hem 
generally to the worft, when they are left to themfelues. 
But, purfue it, now thou haft 'hem. 

Hav. Shall we goe in againe, MOROSE ? 

Epi. Yes, madame. 70 

Cen. Wee'U entreat fir Davphines companie. 

Trv. Stay, good madame, the inter-view of the two 
friends, Pylades and ORESTES : I'll fetch 'hem out to you 
flraight. 

Hav. Will you, mailer Trve-WIT ? 75 

Dav. I, but noble ladies, doe not confede in your coun- 
tenance, or outward bearing to 'hem any difcouerie of their 
follies, that wee may fee, how they will beare vp againe, 
with what affurance, and eredion. 

Hav. We will not, fir Davphine. 80 

Cen. Mav. Vpon our honors, fir Davphine. 

Trv. Sir Amorovs, fir Amorovs. The ladies are here. 

La-f. Are they ? 

Trv. Yes, but flip out by and by, as their backs are 
turn'd, and meet fir lOHN here, as by chance, when I call 85 
you. Iack Daw. 

Daw. What fay you, fir ? 

Trv. Whip out behind me fuddenly : and no anger 
i' your lookes to your aduerfarie. Now, now. 

La-f. Noble fir Iohn Daw ! where ha' you beene ? 90 

Daw. To feeke you, fir Amorovs. 

La-f. Me ! I honor you. 

Daw. I preuent you, fir. 

Cle. They haue forgot their rapiers ! [5851 

Trv. O, they meet in peace, man. 95 

Dav, Where 's your fword, fir lOHN ? 

Cle. And yours, fir Amorovs ? 

89 i' your] in your W. . . 



gS The filent Woman [act iiii 

Daw. Mine ! my boy had it forth, to mend the handle, 
eene now. 
100 La-F. And my gold handle was broke, too, and my boy 
had it forth. 

Dav. Indeed, fir? How their excufes meet ! 
Cle. What a confent there is, i' the handles ? 
Trv. Nay, there is fo i' the points too, I warrant you. 
105 M"- T. O me ! madame, he comes againe, the mad 
man, away. 

Aa IIII. Scene VII. 

He had MOROSE, TRVE-WIT, ClERIMONT, DaVPHINE. 

found the 

ttvo /words T TT THat make thefe naked weapons here, gentlemen ? 



draw tie %/ % / 



ivithiti. 

fince you went ! A couple of knights fallen out about the 
brides fauours : wee were faine to take away their weapons, 

5 your houfe had been beg'd by this time elfe 

Mor. For what ? 

Cle. For man-flaughter, fir, as being accedary. 
Mor. And, for her fauours ? 

Trv. I, fir, heretofore, not prefent. Clerimont, carry 'hem 
10 their fwords, now. They haue done all the hurt they will doe. 
Dav. Ha' you fipoke with a lawyer, fir ? 
Mor. O, no! there is fuch a noyfe i'the court, that 
they haue frighted mee home, with more violence then 
I went ! fuch fpeaking, and counter-fpeaking, with their 
15 feuerall voyces of citations, appellations, allegations, certi- 
ficates, attachments, intergatories, references, conuiSiions, and 
affli£iions indeed^ among the Dodrors and Prodors ! that 
the noife here is filence too 't ! a kind of calme mid-night ! 
Trv. Why, fir, if you would be refolu'd indeed, I can 
20 bring you hether a very fufficient Lawyer, and a learned 
Diuine, that fliall inquire into euery leafi: fcruple for you. 

2 like to been] like to have been W ... 11 a lawyer] the lawyer W... 

16 intergatories] interrogatories 1640 . . . IV M 



SC. vii] The Ji lent IVoman gg 

MOR. Can you, mallrer Trve-WIT ? 

Trv. Yes, and are very fober graue perfons, that will 
difpatch it in a chamber, with a whifper, or two. 

MOR. Good fir, fliall I hope this benefit from you, and 25 
truft my felfe into your hands ? 

Trv. Alas, fir ! your nephew, and I, haue beene alham'd, 
and oft-times mad fince you went, to thinke how you are 
abus'd. Goe in, good fir, and lock your felfe vp till we 
call you, wee '11 tell you more anon, fir. 3° 

MOR. Doe your pleafure with me, gentlemen ; I be- 
leeue in you : and that deferues no delufion 

Trv. You fliall find none, fir : but heapt, heapt plentie [586] 
of vexation. 

Dav. What wilt thou doe now, Wit ? 35 

Trv. Recouer me hether Otter, and the Barber, if you 
can, by any meanes, prefently. 

Dav. Why ? to what purpofe ? 

Trv. O, I'll make the deepeft Diuine, and graueft 
Lawyer, out o' them two, for him 40 

Dav. Thou canft not man, thefe are waking dreames. 

Trv. Doe not feare me. Clap but a ciuill gowne with 
a welt, o' the one ; and a canonical cloake with fleeues, 
o' the other : and giue 'hem a few termes i' the mouthes, 
if there come not forth as able a Do6tor, and compleat 45 
a Parfon, for this turne, as may be willi'd, truft not my 
eledtion. And, I hope, without wronging the dignitie of 
either profeflion, fince they are but perfons put on, and for 
mirths fake, to torment him. The Barber fmatters latijt, 
I remember. 50 

Dav. Yes, and Otter too. 

Trv. Well then, if I make 'hem not wrangle out this 
cafe, to his no comfort, let me be thought a IacK Daw, or 
La-Foole, or any thing worfe. Goe you to your ladies, 
but firft fend for them. 55 

Dav. I will. 

43 a welt] the welt 1717 

i-OFC, 



loq The filent Woman [act v 

Aa V. Scene I. 
La-Foole, Clerimont, Daw, Mavis. 

T TT THere had you our fwords, mafter Clerimont ? 
V V Cle. Why, Davphine tooke 'hem from the 
mad-man. 

La-f. And he tooke 'hem from our boyes, I warrant 
5 you? 

Cle. Very like, fir. 

La-F. Thanke you, good mafter Clerimont. Sir 
lOHN Daw, and I are both beholden to you. 

Cle. Would I knew how to make you fo, gentlemen. 
lo Daw. Sir Amorovs, and I are your feruants, fir. 

Mav. Gentlemen, haue any of you a pen-and-inke. 
I would faine write out a riddle in Italiajt, for fir DAV- 
PHINE, to tranflate. 

Cle. Not I, in troth, lady, I am no fcriuener. 
15 Daw. I can furnifh you, I thinke, lady. 

Cle. He has it in the haft of a knife, I beleeue ! 
La-F. No, he has his boxe of infhruments. 
Cle. Like a furgean ! 

La-F. For the mathematiques : his fquire, his com- 
20 pafles, his braile pens, and black-lead, to draw maps of 
euery place, and perfon, where he comes. 
Cle. How, maps of perfons ! 
[587] La-F. Yes, fir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and ot 
the Prince o( Moldauta, and of his millris, miftris EPICCENE. 
25 Cle. Away ! he has not found out her latitude, I hope. 
La-F. You are a pleafant gentleman, fir. 
Cle. Faith, now we are in priuate, lets wanton it a little, 
and talke waggilhly. Sir lOHN, I am telling fir AmoROVS 

Ac( V. Scene I.] includes all the Act in Scene I. A Room in Morose's 
House. G 

14 in troth,] in troth F^ 19 squire] square Wj2 ... 25 has] 

hath W... 



sc. i] The jilent Woman loi 

here, that you two gouerne the ladies, where e're you come, 
you carry the feminine gender afore you. 30 

Daw. They fhall rather carry vs afore them, if they 
will, fir. 

CLE. Nay, I beleeue that they doe, withall — But, that 
you are the prime-men in their affedions, and diredt all 
their adions 35 

Daw. Not I : fir Amorovs is. 

La-F. I proteft, fir lOHN is. 

Daw. As I hope to rife i' the ftate, fir Amorovs, you 
ha' the perfon. 

La-F. Sir lOHN, you ha' the perfon, and the dif- 40 
courfe too. 

Daw. Not I, fir. I haue no difcourfe — and then you 
haue a6tiuitie befide. 

La-F. I proteft, fir lOHN, you come as high from Tri- 
poly, as I doe euery whit : and lift as many ioyn'd ftooles, 45 
and leape ouer 'hem, if you would vfe it 

Cle. Well, agree on't together knights ; for betweene 
you, you diuide the kingdome, or common-wealth of ladies 
affedions : I fee it, and can perceiue a little how they 
obferue you, and feare you, indeed. You could tell ftrange 50 
ftories, my mafters, if you would, I know. 

Daw. Faith, we haue feene fomewhat, fir. 

La-F. That we haue — vellet petti-coates, & wrought 
fmocks, or fo. 

Daw. I, and 55 

Cle. Nay, out with it, fir lOHN: doe not enuie your 
friend the pleafure of hearing, when you haue had the 
delight of tafting. 

Daw. Why a doe you fpeake, fir Amorovs. 

La-F. No, doe you, fir Iohn Daw. 60 

Daw. I' faith, you fiiall. 

La-F. r faith you fliall. 

Daw. Why, we haue beene 

63 vellet] velvet 16i0 . . . 



I02 The filent Woman [act v 

La-f. In the great bed at Ware together in our time. 
6s On, fir lOHN. 

Daw. Nay, doe you, fir Amorovs. 

Cle. And thefe ladies with you, Knights? 

La-f. No, excufe vs, fir. 

Daw. We muft not wound reputation. 
70 La-f. No matter — they were thefe, or others. Our 
bath coft vs fifteene pound, when we came home. 

Cle. Doe you heare, fir lOHN, you fliall tell me but 
one thing truely, as you loue me. 

Daw. If I can, I will, fir. 
[588] 75 Cle. You lay in the fame houfe with the bride, 
here? 

Daw. Yes, and conuerft with her hourely, fir. 

Cle. And what humour is fliee of? is fhee comming, 
and open, free? 
80 Daw. O, exceeding open, fir. I was her feruant, and 
fir Amorovs was to be. 

Cle. Come, you haue both had fauours from her? 
I know, and haue heard fo much. 

Daw. O, no, fir. 
85 La-f. You fhall excufe vs, fir : we muft not wound 
reputation. 

Cle. Tut, lliee is married, now ; and you cannot hurt 
her with any report, and therefore fpeake plainely : how 
many times, yfaith ? which of you lead firft ? Ha ? 
90 La-f. Sir Iohn had her mayden-head, indeed. 

Daw. O, it pleafes him to fay fo, fir, but fir AMOROVS 
knowes what 's what, as well. 

Cle. Do'ft thou yfaith, AMOROVS ? 

La-f. In a manner, fir. 
95 Cle. Why, I commend you lads. Little knowes Don 
Bride-groome of this. Nor fliall he, for me. 

Daw. Hang him, mad oxe. 

Cle. Speake foftly : here comes his nephew, with the 

89 lead] led lUO . . . 



sc. i] The Ji lent Woman 103 

lady HavghTY. Hee'll get the ladies from you, firs, if you 
looke not to him in time. 100 

La-F. Why, if he doe, wee'll fetch 'hem home againe, 
I warrant you. 



A& V. Scene II. 
Havghty, Davphine, Centavre, Mavis, Clerimont. 

IAflure you, fir DAVPHINE, it is the price and eftima- 
tion of your vertue onely, that hath embarqu'd me to 
this aduenture, and I could not but make out to tell you 
fo ; nor can I repent me of the ad:, fince it is alwayes an 
argument of fome vertue in our felues, that we loue and 5 
affed it fo in others. 

Dav. Your ladifliip fets too high a price, on my weak- 
neffe. 

Hav. Sir, I can diftinguifh gemmes from peebles 
Dav. (Are you fo skilfull in ftones?) 10 

Hav. And, howfoeuer I may fuffer in fuch a iudge- 
ment as yours, by admitting equality of ranke, or focietie, 

with Centavre, or Mavis 

Dav. You doe not, madame, I perceiue they are your 
mere foiles. 15 

Hav. Then are you a friend to truth, fir. It makes me 
loue you the more. It is not the outward, but the inward 
man that I affed:. They are not apprehenfiue of an 
eminent perfe6lion, but loue flat, and dully. 

Cen. Where are you, my lady Havghty ? 20 

Hav. I come prefently, Centavre. My chamber, fir, [589] 
my Page fliall fhow you ; and Trvsty, my woman, fliall 
be euer awake for you : you need not feare to communi- 
cate any thing with her, for fliee is a Fidelia. I pray you 

3, 4 tell yon so] o»i. so Q lo G removes ( ), marking by \_AsiJe'] 

2 2 show] shew 1692 . . . 



I04 The Jilent IVoman [act v 

25 weare this iewell for my fake, fir Davphine. Where 's 
Mavis, Centavre? 

Cen. Within, madame, a writing. I'll follow you 
prefently. I'll but fpeake a word with fir DAVPHINE. 
Davp. With me, madame ? 
30 Cen. Good fir Davphine, doe not truft Havghty, nor 
make any credit to her, what euer you doe befides. Sir 
Davphine, I giue you this caution, fliee is a perfedt 
courtier, and loues no body, but for her vfes : and for her 
vfes, (liee loues all. Befides, her phyfitians giue her out to 
35 be none o' the cleareft, whether flie pay 'hem or no, hcau'n 
knowes : and fhe 's aboue fiftie too, and pargets ! See her 
in a fore-noone. Here comes Mavis, a worfe face then 
fliee ! you would not like this, by candle-light. If you'll 
come to my chamber one o' thefe mornings early, or late 
40 in an euening, I'll tell you more. Where 's Havghty, 
Mavis ? 
Mav. Within, Centavre. 
Cen. What ha' you there ? 

Mav. An Italian riddle for fir Davphine, (you fliall 
45 not fee it yfaith, Centavre.) Good fir Davphine, folue 
it for mee. I'll call for it anon. 

CLE. How now, Davphine ? how do'ft thou quit thy 
felfe of thefe females ? 

Davp. 'Slight, they haunt me WVie fayries^ and giue me 
50 iewells here, I cannot be rid of 'hem. 
Cle. O, you muft not tell, though. 
Davp. MaiTe, I forgot that : I was neuer fo afTaulted. 
One loues for vertue, and bribes me with this. Another 
loues me with caution, and fo would polTeiTe me. A third 
55 brings me a riddle here, and all are iealous : and raile each 
at other. 
j/c reades Cle. A, riddle ? pray' le' me fee 't ? Sir Davphine, 
e papei . j ckofe this way of intimation for priiiacie. The ladies here, 

34 physitians] physicians Q 44 (you shall . . .)] — you shall . . . — G 

50 I cannot] I cannot, I cannot n'62 



sc. ii] The Jilent Woman 105 

/ knoWf haue both hope, and purpofe, to make a collegiate 
and feruant of you. If I tnight be fo honor d, as to appeare ^o 
at any end of fo noble a worke, I would enter into a fame of 
taking phyftgue to morrow, and contimce it foure or fine 
day es, or longer, for your vifitation. MAVIS. By my faith, 
a fubtle one ! Call you this a riddle ? What 's their 
plaine dealing, trow ? 65 

Davp. We lack Trve-wit, to tell vs that. 

Cle. We lack him for fomewhat elfe too : his Knights 
reformados are wound vp as high, and infolent, as euer 
they were. 

Davp. You ieft. 70 

Cle. No drunkards, either with wine or vanitie, euer 
confefs'd fuch ftories of themfelues. I would not giue 
a flies leg, in ballance againft all the womens reputations 
here, if they could bee but thought to fpeake | truth : and, [590] 
for the bride, they haue made their af[idauit againft her 75 
diredly 

Davp. What, that they haue lyen with her ? 

Cle. Yes, and tell times, and circumftances, with the 
caufe why, and the place where. I had almoft brought 
'hem to affirme that they had done it, to day. 80 

Davp. Not both of 'hem. 

Cle. Yes faith : with a footh or two more I had efifeded 
it. They would ha' fet it downe vnder their hands. 

Davp. Why, they will be our fport, I fee, ftill ! whether 
we will, or no. 85 

62 physique] physicke Q continue it] continue you it ^ 77 that 

om. 1717 . . . lyen] lain 1692 . , . 



H 



io6 The filent Woman [act v 



A a V. Scene III. 

Trve-wit, Morose, Otter, Cvtberd, 
Clerimont, Davphine. 

OAre you here ? Come Davphine. Goe, call your 
^ vncle prefently. I haue fitted my Diuine, %i my 
Canonift, died their beards and all : the knaues doe not 
know themfelues they are fo exalted, and alter'd. Prefer- 

5 ment changes any man. Thou fhalt keepe one dore, and 
I another, and then Clerimont in the midft, that he may 
haue no meanes of efcape from their cauilling, when they 
grow hot once. And then the women (as I haue giuen the 
bride her inftrudions) to breake in vpon him, i' the tenuoy. 

lo O, 'twill be full and twanging ! Away, fetch him. Come, 
mafter Do6tor, and mafter Parfon, looke to your parts now, 
and difcharge 'hem brauely : you are well fet forth, 
performe it as well. If you chance to be out, doe not 
confeffe it with ftanding ftill, or humming, or gaping at one 

15 another: but goe on, and talke alowd, and eagerly, vfe 
vehement adion, and onely remember your termes, and 
you are fafe. Let the matter goe where it will : you haue 
many will doe fo. But at firft, bee very iblemne, and 
graue like your garments, though you loofe your felues 

30 after, and skip out like a brace of iugglers on a table. 
Here hee comes ! fet your faces, and looke fupercilioufly, 
while I prefent you. 

MOR. Are thefe the two learned men ? 
Trv. Yes, fir, pleafe you falute 'hem ? 

25 MOR. Salute 'hem ? I had rather doe any thing, then 
weare out time so vnfruitfully, fir. I wonder, how thefe 
common formes, ^s god fane you, and you are well-come^ are 
come to be a habit in our lines ! or, / am glad to fee you ! 
when I cannot fee, what the profit can bee of thefe wordes, 

8 once] once againe Q 8, 9 ( ) (7 substitutes commas 



sc. Ill] The Jilent Woman 107 

fo long as it is no whit better with him, whofe affaires are 30 
fad, & grieuous, that he heares this falutation. 

Trv. 'Tis true, fir, wee'll goe to the matter then. 
Gentlemen, mafter Do6tor, and mafter Parfon, I haue 
acquainted you fufficiently with the bufines, for which you 
are come hether. And you are not now to enforme | your 35 \p^^\ 
felues in the ftate of the queftion, I know. This is the 
gentleman, who experts your refolution, and therefore, 
when you pleafe, beginne. 

Ott. Pleafe you, mafter Dodor, 

CvT. Pleafe you, good mafter Parfon. 40 

Ott. I would heare the Canon-law fpeake firft. 

CvT. It muft giue place to pofitiue Diuinitie, fir. 

MOR. Nay, good gentlemen, doe not throw me into 
circumftances. Let your comforts arriue quickly at me, 
thofe that are. Be fwift in affoording me my peace, if fo 45 
I fliall hope any. I loue not your difputations, or your 
court- tumults. And that it be not ftrange to you, I will 
tell you. My father, in my education, was wont to aduife 
mee, that I fliould alwayes colledt, and contayne my mind, 
not fuffring it to flow loofely ; that I fliould looke to what 5° 
things were neceftary to the carriage of my life, and what 
not : embracing the one and efchewing the other. In 
iliort, that I fliould endeare my felfe to reft, and auoid 
turmoile : which now is growne to be another nature to me. 
So that I come not to your publike pleadings, or your 55 
places of noife ; not that I negledl thofe things, that make 
for the dignitie of the common-wealth : but for the meere 
auoiding of clamors, & impertinencies of Orators, that 
know not how to be filent. And for the caufe of noife, am 
I now a futor to you. You doe not know in what a miferie 6° 
I haue beene exercis'd this day, what a torrent of euill ! 
My very houfe turnes round with the tumult ! I dwell in 
a wind-mill ! The perpetuall motion is here, and not at 
Eltham. 

35 hether] hither Q,.. 
H 2, 



io8 The Jilent Woman [act v 

65 Trv. Well, good mafter Dodtor, will you breake the 
ice ? mafter Parfon will wade after. 

CVT. Sir, though vnworthy, and the weaker, I will 
prefume. 

Ott. 'Tis no prefumption, domine Do6tor. 
70 MOR. Yet againe ! 

CVT. Your queftion is, for how many caufes a man may 
haue diuorthmi legitimum, a lawfull diuorce. Firft, you 
muft vnderftand the nature of the word diuorce, d diuer-r 

tendo 

75 MoR. No excurfions vpon words, good Dodtor, to the 
queftion briefly. 

CvT. I anfwere then, the Canon-law affords diuorce 
but in few cafes, and the principall is in the common cafe, 
the adulterous cafe. But there are duodecini impedimenta, 
80 twelue impediments (as we call 'hem) all which doe not 
dirimere contra^iim, but irrihim reddere inatrimonium, as 
wee fay in the Canon-law, not take away the bond, but caufe 
a nullitie therein. 

MOR. I vnderftood you, before : good fir, auoid your 
85 impertinencie of tranflation. 

Ott. He cannot open this too much, fir, by your 
fauour. 

MoR. Yet more ! 

Trv. O, you muft giue the learned men leaue, fir. To 
90 your impediments, mafter Dodtor. 

CvT. The firft is itnpedifnetttum erroris. 
[592] Ott. Of which there are feuerall [pedes. 
CvT. I, as error perfonae. 

Ott. If you contradl your felfe to one perfon, thinking 
95 her another. 

CVT. Then, error for tunx. 

Ott. If fhee be a beggar, and you thought her rich. 

CVT. Then, error qualitatis. 

73, 74 diuertendo] divertendendo 1640 . . . 1717 80 () (7 substitutes commas 
94 you] thou 176S 



c. Ill] The filent Woman 109 

Ott. If fliee proue ftubborne, or head-ftrong, that you 
thought obedient. 100 

MOR. How? is that, fir, a lawfull impediment? One 
at once, I pray you, gentlemen, 

Ott. I, ante copulam, but not poft copulam, fir. 

CvT. Mr. Parfon faies right. Nee pofi nuptiarum 
benediEiionein. It doth indeed but irrita redder e fponfalia, 105 
annul! the contra6t : after marriage it is no obftancy. 

Trv. Alas, fir, what a hope are we fall'n from, by this 
time ! 

CvT. The next is conditio', if you thought her free 
borne, and fhee proue a bond- woman, there is impediment no 
of eftate and condition, 

Ott. I, but Mr. Dodor, thofe feruitudes are fublatx, 
now, among vs chriftians, 

CvT. By your fauour, mafter ParfiDn 

Ott. You ihall giue me leaue, rriafter Dodor. 115 

MOR. Nay, gentlemen, quarrell not in that queftion ; it 
concernes not my cafe : pafle to the third, 

CvT, Well then, the third is votum. If either partie 
haue made a vow of chaftitie. But that practice, as mafter 
Parfon faid of the other, is taken away among vs, thanks 120 
be to difcipline. The fourth is cognatio : if the perfons be 
of kinne, within the degrees, 

Ott. I ; doe you know, what the degrees are, fir ? 

MOR. No, nor I care not, fir : they offer me no comfort 
in the queftion, I am fure. 125 

CvT. But, there is a branch of this impediment may, 
which is cognatio fpiritualis. If you were her god-father, 
fir, then the marriage is inceftuous. 

Ott. That comment is abfurd, and fuperftitious, mafter 
Dodor. I cannot endure it. Are we not all brothers and 130 
fifters, and as much a kinne in that, as god-fathers, and 
god-daughters ? 

MOR. O me ! to end the controuerfie, I neuer was 

104, 112 Mr.] Master Q... 



I lo The filent Woman [act v 

a god-father, I neuer was a god-father in my life, fir. Pafle 
135 to the next. 

CvT. The fift is crimen adulterij: the knowne cafe. The 
sixt, ciiltus difparitas, difference of religion : haue you euer 
examin'd her what religion fhee is of? 

MOR. No, I would rather fhee were of none, then bee 
140 put to the trouble of it ! 

Ott. You may haue it done for you, fir. 
MOR. By no meanes, good fir, on, to the reft : Ihall you 
euer come to an end, thinke you ? 
[593] Trv. Yes, hee has done halfe, fir. (On, to the reft) be 
145 patient, and exped, fir. 

CvT. The feuenth is, vis : if it were vpon compulfion, 
or force. 

MOR. O no, it was too voluntarie, mine : too volun- 
tarie. 
150 CvT. The eight is, ordo : if euer fliee haue taken holy 
orders. 

Ott. That 's fuperftitious, too. 

MOR. No matter, mafter Parfon : would fhee would goe 
into a nunnerie yet. 
155 CVT. The ninth is, liganien : if you were bound, fir, to 
any other before. 

MOR. I thruft my felfe too foone into thefe fetters. 
CVT. The tenth is, publice honeftas : which is inchoata 
qudedain affinitas. 
160 Ott. I, or affinitas orta ex Jponfalibus : and is but leue 
impedimenium. 

MOR. I feele no aire of comfort blowing to me, in all 
this. 

CVT. The eleuenth is, affinitas ex forjiicatione. 
165 Ott. Which is no lelle vera affittitas, then the other, 
mcifter Doctor. 

134 in] id ^ 136 fift] fifth l&iO . ^. 137 sixt] sixth 1640 . . . 

144, 145 (On, lo the rest) be patient, ...]r On to the rest. — Be patient, ... G 
150 eight] eighth Q 1640 . . . 



sc. Ill] The filent Woman iii 

CvT. True, quae oritur ex legitimo matrimonio. 

Ott. You fay right, venerable Dodor. And, nafcitur 
ex eo, quod per coniugium dude perfonde efficiuntur una care 

MoR. Hey-day, now they beginne. 17° 

CvT. I conceiue you, mafter Parfon. Ita per fornica- 
tionem xque eft verus pater, qui fie generat 

Ott. Et vere filitis qui fie generatur 

MOR. What 's all this to me ? 

Cle. Now it growes warme. 175 

CvT. The twelfth, and laft \s,fi forte coire nequibis. 

Ott. I, that is impedimentuni grauifsimum. It doth 
vtterly annull, and annihilate, that. If you haue mani- 
feftam frigiditatem, you are well, fir. 

Trv. Why, there is comfort come at length, fir. Con- 180 
fefle your felf but a man vnable, and fliee will fue to be 
diuorc'd firft. 

Ott. I, or if there be morbus perpetuus, & infanabilis, 
as Paralifis, Elephautiafis, or fo 

Dav. O, hM\. frigiditas is the fairer way, gentlemen. 185 

Ott. You fay troth, fir, and as it is in the canon, mafter 
Dodor. 

CVT. I conceiue you, fir. 

Cle. Before he fpeakes. 

Ott. That a boy, or child, vnder yeeres, is not fit for 190 
marriage, becaufe he cannot reddere debitum. So your 
omnipotentes 

Trv. Your impotentes, you whorfon Lobfter. 

Ott. Your impotentes, I fhould fay, are minime apti ad 
contrahenda matrimonium. 195 

Trv. Matrimonium? Wee Ihall haue most vn-matri- 
moniall latin, with you : viatrimonia, and be hang'd. 

Dav. You put 'hem out, man. 

CVT. But then there will arife a doubt, mafter Parfon, 
in our cafe, | poft matrimonium : that frigiditate praeditus, 200 [594] 
(doe you conceiue me, fir ?) 

201 — do you conceive me, sir? G 



112 The Jilent Woman [act v 

Ott. Very well, fir. 

CvT. Who cannot vti vxore pro vxore, may habere eatn 
pro for ore. 
205 Ott. Abfurd, abfurd, abfurd, and merely apoftaticall. 
CvT. You fhall pardon me, mafter Parfon, I can 
proue it. 

Ott. You can proue a Will, mafter Do6lor, you can 
proue nothing elfe. Do's not the verfe of your owne canon 

aio fay. Hsec focianda vetant conubia, fatl:a retraEiant 

CVT. I grant you, but how doe they retra£iare, mafter 
Parfon ? 

MOR. (O, this was it, I fear'd.) 
Ott. In aeternum, fir. 
215 CVT. That 's falfe in diuinitie, by your fauour. 

Ott. 'Tis falfe in humanitie, to fay fo. Is hee not 
prorfns invtilis ad thoruin ? Can \\q, prxflare fidem daiani ? 
I would faine know. 

CVT. Yes : how if he doe conualere ? 
320 Ott. He can not conualere^ it is impoffible. 

Try, Nay, good fir, attend the learned men, they'll 
thinke you negle6t 'hem elfe. 

CvT. Or, if he doe fimulare himfelfe frigidtim^ odio 
vxoris, or fo ? 
235 Ott. I fay, he is adrdter manifefius^ then. 

Davp. (They difpute it very learnedly, yfaith.) 
Ott. And proflitutor vxoris, and this is pofitiue. 
MOR. Good fir, let me efcape. 
Trv. You will not doe me that wrong, fir ? 

330 Ott. And therefore, if he be nianifefie frigidus^ fir 

CvT. I, if he be manifejie frigidus, I grant you 

Ott. Why, that was my conclufion. 

CVT. And mine too. 

Trv. Nay, heare the conclufion, fir. 

335 Ott. Th.QTiyfrigiditatis caufa 

CVT. Yes, caufa frigiditatis 

210 conubia\ connubia Q... 213, 226 ( ) om. G 



sc. Ill] The filent Woman 113 

MOR. O, mine eares ! 

Ott. Shee may haue libellum diuortij, againft you. 

CvT. I, ditiortij libellum fliee will fure haue. 

MOR. Good eccho's, forbeare. 240 

Ott. If you confede it. 

CvT. Which I would doe, fir 

MOR. I will doe any thing 

Ott. And cleere my felfe mforo confcientix 

CvT. Becaufe you want indeed 245 

MoR. Yet more ? 

Ott. Exercendi potefiate. 



A a V. Scene I III. [595] 

Epicoene, Morose, Havghty, Centavre, Mavis, 

M"- Otter, Daw, Trve-wit, Davphine, Clerimont, 

La-Foole, Otter, Cvtberd. 

I Will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I befeech you 
helpe me. This is fuch a wrong, as neuer was ofifer'd 
to poore bride before. Vpon her marriage day, to haue 
her husband confpire againft her, and a couple of mercin- 
arie companions, to be brought in for formes fake, to 5 
perfwade a feparation ! If you had bloud, or vertue in 
you, gentlemen, you would not fufifer fuch eare-wigs about 
a husband, or fcorpions, to creep between man and wife 

MOR. O, the varietie and changes of my torment ! 

Hav. Let 'hem be cudgell'd out of dores, by our 10 
groomes. 

Cen. I'll lend you my foot-man. 

Mav, Wee'll haue our men blanket 'hem i' the hall. 

M"- Ot. As there was one, at our houfe, madame, for 
peeping in at the dore. 15 

Daw. Content, yfaith. 

245 want] wane Q 



1 14 The filent Woman [act v 

Trv. Stay, ladies, and gentlemen, you'll heare, before 
you proceed ? 

Mav. rild ha' the bride-groome blanketted, too. 
20 Cen. Beginne with him firft. 
Hav. Yes, by my troth. 
MOR. O, mankind generation ! 
Davp. Ladies, for my fake forbeare. 
Hav. Yes, for fir Davphines fake. 
25 Cen. He fliall command vs. 

La-f. He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madame, 
as any is about the towne, and weares as good colours 
when he lift. 

Trv. Be brief, fir, and confefle your infirmitie, fhee'll be 
30 a-fire to be quit of you, if fliee but heare that nam'd once, 
you fhall not entreat her to ftay. Shee'll flie you, like one 
that had the marks vpon him. 

MOR. Ladies, I muft craue all your pardons 

Trv. Silence, ladies. 
35 Mor. For a wrong I haue done to your whole fexe, in 

marrying this faire, and vertuous gentlewoman 

Cle. Heare him, good ladies. 

MOR. Being guiltie of an infirmitie, which before, 
I confer'd with thefe learned men, I thought I might haue 

40 conceal'd ■ 

Trv. But now being better inform'd in his confcience 
by them, hee is to declare it, & giue fatisfadlion, by asking 
your publique forgiueneffe. 
[596] Mor. I am no man, ladies. 
45 All. How ! 

Mor. Vtterly vn-abled in nature, by reafon oi frigidity, 
to performe the duties, or any the leaft office of a 
husband. 

Mav. Now, out vpon him, prodigious creature ! 
50 Cen. Bride-groome vncarnate. 

19 nid] I'll i7i7; rid IV; I'd G 28 list] lists lUQ... 43 publique] 
publick md2 . . . ; public G 



sc. mi] The Jilent Woman 115 

Hav. And would you offer it, to a young gentle- 
woman ? 

M"- Ot. a lady of her longings ? 

Epi. Tut, a deuice, a deuice, this, it fmells rankly, 
ladies. A mere comment of his owne. 55 

Trv. Why, if you fufped that, ladies, you may haue 
him fearch'd. 

Daw. As the cuftome is, by a iurie of phyfitians. 

La-f. Yes faith, 'twill be braue. 

MOR. O me, muft I vnder-goe that ! 60 

]y[r8. Qrp_ ]sJq^ |g^ women fearch him, madame: we can 
doe it ourfelues. 

MOR. Out on me, worfe ! 

Epi. No, ladies, you fhall not need, I'll take him with 
all his faults. 65 

MOR. Worft of all. 

Cle. Why, then 'tis no diuorce, Dodor, if fliee confent 
not? 

CVT. No, if the man be frigidus, it is de parte vxoris, 
that wee grant libellum diuortij, in the law. 7° 

Ott. I, it is the fame in theologie. * 

MOR. Worfe, worfe then worft ! 

Trv. Nay, fir, bee not vtterly dif-heartned, wee haue 
yet a fmall relique of hope left, as neere as our comfort is 
blowne out. Clerimont, produce your brace of Knights. 75 
What was that, mafter Parfon, you told me zn err ore 
qualitatis, e'ne now ? Davphine, whifper the bride, that 
ftiee carry it as if fhee were guiltie, and afliam'd. 

Ott. Mary fir, m errore qualitatis (which mafter Doftor 
did forbeare to vrge) if Ihee bee found corrupta^ that is, 80 
vitiated or broken vp, that was pro -virgine defponfa^ 
efpous'd for a maid 

MOR. What then, fir ? 

Ott. It doth dirimere contraBtim, and irritum redder e too. 

73 dis-heartned] disheartened G 74 relique] relike Q ; relick 1&92 . . . ; 

relic M 



1 16 The filent Woman [act v 

85 Trv. If this be true, we are happy againe, fir, once 
more. Here are an honorable brace of Knights, that fhall 
affirme fo much. 

Daw. Pardon vs, good matter Clerimont. 
La-f. You fhall excufe vs, mafter Clerimont. 
90 CLE. Nay, you muft make it good now. Knights, there 
is no remedie, I'll eate no words for you, nor no men : you 
know you fpoke it to me ? 

Daw. Is this gentleman-like, fir ? 
Trv. Iack Daw, hee 's worfe then fir Amorovs : fiercer 
95 a great deale. Sir Amorovs, beware, there be ten Dawes 
in this Clerimont. 

La-f. I'll confefTe it, fir. 

Daw. Will you, fir Amorovs ? will you wound re- 
putation ? 
100 La-f. I am refialu'd. 
[597] Trv. So fhould you be too, Iack Daw : what fhould 
keepe you off? Shee is but a woman, and in difgrace. 
Hee'll be glad on 't. 

Daw. Will he ? I thought he would ha' beene angrie. 
105 Cle. You will difpatch, Knights, it muft be done, 
yfaith. 

Trv. Why, an' it muft it fliall, fir, they fay. They'll 
ne're goe backe. Doe not tempt his patience. 
Daw. It is true indeed, fir. 
no La-f. Yes, I affure you, fir. 

MOR. What is true gentlemen ? what doe you afliire 
me? 

Daw. That we haue knowne your bride, fir 

La-f. In good fafhion. Shee was our miftris, or fo 

115 Cle. Nay, you muft be plaine, Knights, as you were to 
me. 

Ott. I, the queftion is, if you haue carnaliter, or no. 
La-f. Carnaliier ? what elfe, fir ? 
Ott. It is inough : a plaine nullitie. 

93 gentleman-like] gentleman-like-like Q 



sc. mi] The filent Woman 117 

En. I am vn-done ! I am vn-done ! lao 

MOR. O, let me worfhip and adore you, gentlemen ! 

Epi. I am vn-done ! 

MoR. Yes, to my hand, I thanke thefe Knights : mafter 
Parfon, let me thanke you otherwife. 

Cen. And, ha' they confefs'd ? 125 

Mav. Now out vpon 'hem, informers ! 

Trv. You fee, what creatures you may beftow your 
fauours on, madames. 

Hav. I would except againft 'hem as beaten Knights, 
wench, and not good witneflTes in law. 130 

M"- Ot. Poore gentlewoman, how Ihee takes it ! 

Hav. Be comforted, MoROSE, I loue you the better 
for't. 

Cen. So doe I, I proteft. 

CVT. But gentlemen, you haue not knowne her, fince 135 
matrimonmm ? 

Daw. Not to day, mafter Dodor. 

La-f. No, fir, not to day. 

CVT. Why, then I fay, for any adl before, the matri- 
monium. is good and perfed : vnlefie, the worfhipfuU Bride- 140 
groome did precifely, before witnefle demand, if fhee were 
virgo ante nuptias. 

Epi. No, that he did not, I aflTure you, mafter Dodor. 

CvT. If he cannot proue that, it is ratum coniugium, 
notwithftanding the premifes. And they doe no way 145 
impedire. And this is my fentence, this I pronounce. 

Ott. I am of mafter Dodtors refolution too, fir : if you 
made not that demand, ante nuptias. 

MoR. O my heart ! wilt thou breake ? wilt thou breake ? 
this is worft of all worft worfts ! that hell could haue deuis'd ! 150 
Marry a whore ! and fo much noife ! 

Davp. Come, I fee now plaine confederacie in this 
Doitor, and this | Parfon, to abufe a gentleman. You [598] 
ftudie his afflidion. I pray bee gone companions. And 

154 bee gone companions] be gone, companions WiO . . . 



ii8 The Jilent Woman [act v 

155 gentlemen, I begin to fufped you for hauing parts with 
'hem. Sir, will it pleafe you heare me ? 

MOR. O, doe not talke to me, take not from mee the 
pleafure of dying in filence, nephew. 

Davp. Sir, I muft fpeake to you. I haue beene long 
160 your poore defpis'd kinf-man, and many a hard thought 
has ftrength'ned you againfb me : but now it (hall appeare 
if either I loue you or your peace, and preferre them to all 
the world befide. I will not bee long or grieuous to you, 
fir. If I free you of this vnhappy match abfolutely, and 
165 inftantly after all this trouble, and almoft in your defpaire, 
now 

MOR. (It cannot be.) 

Davp. Sir, that you bee neuer troubled with a murmure 
of it more, what fhall I hope for, or deferue of you ? 
170 MOR. O, what thou wilt, nephew! thou fhalt deferue 
mee, and haue mee. 

Davp. Shall I haue your fauour perfed to me, and loue 
hereafter ? 

MOR. That, and any thing befide. Make thine owne 
175 conditions. My whole eftate is thine. Manage it, I will 
become thy Ward. 

Davp. Nay, fir, I will not be fo vn-reafonable. 

Epi. Will fir Davphine, be mine enemie too ? 

Davp. You know, I haue beene long a futor to you, 
180 vncle, that out of your eftate, whfch is fifteen hundred 
a yeere, you would allow me but fine hundred during life, 
and aflure the reft vpon me after : to which I haue often, 
by my felfe and friends tendred you a writing to figne, 
which you would neuer confent, or incline too. If you 
185 pleafe but to affe6t it now 

MOR. Thou flialt haue it, nephew. I will doe it, and 
more. 

Davp. If I quit you not prefently ? and for-euer of this 
' cumber, you fliall haue power inftantly, afore all thefe, to 

i6-] {) om. G 188 presently ?] presently, 1640 .. . 



sc. mi] The Jilent Woman 119 

reuoke your a6t, and I will become, whofe flaue you will 19° 
giue me to, for-euer. 

MOR. Where is the writing ? I will feale to it, that, or 
to a blanke, and write thine owne conditions. 

Epi. O me, moft vnfortunate wretched gentlewoman ! 

Hav. Will fir Davphine doe this ? 195 

Epi. Good fir, haue fome compaflfion on me. 

MOR. O, my nephew knowes you belike : away 
crocodile. 

Cen. He do's it not fure, without good ground. 

Davp. Here, fir. 200 

MoR. Come, nephew: giue me the pen. I will fub- 
fcribe to any thing, and feale to what thou wilt, for my 
deliuerance. Thou art my reftorer. Here, I deliuer it thee 
as my deed. If there bee a word in it lacking, or writ 

with falfe orthographic, I proteft before 1 will not take 205 

the aduantage. 

Davp. Then here is your releafe, fir ; you haue married He takes of 
a boy: a gentlemans fon, that I haue brought vp \h.\s pf^^^"g^ 
halfe yeere, at my great charges, and for this compofition, 
which I haue now made with you. What fay you, [ mafter 2io[599] 
Do6bor? this is iufium impedimentum, I hope, error 
perfonse ? 

Ott. Yes fir, in primo gradu. 

CvT. In primo gradu. 

Davp. I thanke you, good Dodor CvTBERD, and Par- He pulls 
fon Otter. You are beholden to 'hem, fir, that haue beardes and 
taken this paines for you : and my friend, mafl:er Trve- difguifes. 
WIT, who enabled 'hem for the bufineflfe. Now you may 
goe in and reft, be as priuate as you will, fir. I'll not 
trouble you, till you trouble me with your funerall, which 220 
I care not how foone it come. Cvtberd, I'll make your 
leafe good. Thanke mee not, but with your leg, Cvtberd. 
And Tom Otter, your Princefie fhall be reconcil'd to you. 
How now, gentlemen ! doe you looke at me ? 
205 before ] before [heaven] G 



120 The Jilent Woman 

225 Cle. a boy. 

Davp. Yes, miftris EPICOENE. 

Trv. Well, Davphine, you haue lurch'd your friends 
of the better halfe of the garland, by concealing this part of 
the plot ! but much good doe it thee, thou deferu'ft it, lad. 

230 And Clerimont, for thy vnexpe6ted bringing in thefe two 
to confeffion, weare my part of it freely. Nay, fir Daw, 
and fir La-Foole, you fee the gentlewoman that has done 
you the fauours ! we are all thankefull to you, and fo 
fhould the woman-kind here, fpecially for lying on her, 

235 though not with her ! You meant fo, I am fure ? But, 
that we haue ftuck it vpon you to day, in your own 
imagin'd perfons, and fo lately ; this /i/;z<a:^<?;«, the champion 
of the fexe, fhould beate you now thriftily, for the common 
flanders, which ladies receiue from fuch cuckowes, as you 

240 are. You are they, that when no merit or fortune can 
make you hope to enioy their bodies, will yet lie with their 
reputations, and make their fame fuffer. Away you 
common moths of thefe, and all ladies honors. Goe, 
trauaile to make legs and faces, and come home with fome 

245 new matter to be laught at : you deferue to Hue in an aire 
as corrupted, as that wherewith you feed rumor. Madames, 
you are mute, vpon this new metamorphojis \ but here 
ftands fliee, that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of 
fuch infeSise hereafter. And let it not trouble you that you 

250 haue difcouer'd any myfteries to this yong gentleman. He 
is (a'moft) of yeeres, & will make a good vifitant within 
this twelue-month. In the meane time, wee '11 all vnder- 
take for his fecrecie, that can fpeake fo well of his filence. 
Spedrators, if you like this comcedie, rife cheerefully, and 

255 now Morose is gone in, clap your hands. It may be, that 
noyfe will cure him, at leaft pleafe him. 
THE END. 

230 briuging in] bringing 1640 . .. 239 cuckowes] cuckows W; 

cuckoos G 240 merit or fortune] merit of fortune 16i0 . . . 1717 

244 trauaile] travel 1692... 251 (a'most)] almost G 



[600] 



This Comoedie was firft 

a6ted, in the yeere 
1609. 

By the Children of her Maiefties 
Revells ^ 

The principall Comoedlans were, 



Nat. Field. 
Gil. Carie. 



Will. Barksted. 
Will. Pen. 



HvG. Attawel. Ric. Allin. 

lOH. Smith. ) ( Ion. Blaney. 



With the allowance of the Mafler of Revells. 



' Children of her Maiesties Revells] King's Majesty's Servants lin W 



NOTES 

References to the text oi Epiccene are to act, scene, and line 
of this edition. Other references to Jonson are to the Cunningham- 
Gifford edition, act, scene, page, and in the case of minor works to 
the volume also ; references to Shakespeare are to Globe ed., act, 
scene, and line : in the plays of these two dramatists the author's 
name is omitted. Abbreviations require no explanation beyond 
that furnished by the Bibliography, unless it be Wh.-C. for 
Wheatley-Cunningham's London Past and Present ; Stow, for Survey 
of London-, Abbott, for Abbott's Shakespearean Grammar. 

Title- Page. 

Epiccsne, Gr. enUoivos 'of either gender', 'promiscuous'. Not 
uncommon in Jonson : News from the New World, vol. 7.344: ' The 
isle of the Epiccenes because there under one article both kinds are 
signified'; Neptune's Triumph, voX.S.'^i: ' Of the epicoene gender, 
hees and shees: Amphibion Archy is the chief; Underwoods 47, 
vol. 8. 421 : The Court Pucelle 

In an epicoene fury can write news 

Equal with that which for the best news goes. 

From the first the comedy has been popularly called by its sub- 
title. The filent Woman. Both are suggestive of the plot, and 
taken together make an unusually significant name. 

Comcedie. Jonson always used the Latin form of the word. 
For other examples of Latin spelling in this play, note : aemulation, 
3. 3. 91, 4. 6. 65 ; aeqtdvocate, 4. 2. 36 ; faesible, 3. 3. 100, 4. 4. 109 ; 
suspition, 4. 6. 50; pretious, 4. i. 115 ; insectae, 5. 4. 249. 

the Children of her Maiesties Revells. A company of 
boy actors organized from the choristers of the Chapel Royal. 
First recorded play, Misogonus, Dec. 31, 1559, which aroused Eliza- 
beth's displeasure, caused the dismissal of Cawarden, Master of 
Revels ; second recorded play, Damon and Pythias, the winter of 
1563-4 (Fleay, Stage, pp. 40, 58, 60). Their playhouse was the 
Bell Savage, destroyed 1583 (Prynne, Histriomastix, p. 492). They 
were inhibited from acting until 1591 (Fleay, Stage, p. 81). Eliza- 

I 2 



124 ^^^ Silent Woman [tit. 

beth's warrant for the impressment of choir-boys, Apr. 25, 1585, 
brought Nathaniel Field among them {Aihenceum, Aug. 10, 1889, 
vol. 2. 203-4). From 1 597-1 603 they acted at Blackfriars, under 
the management of Nathaniel Gyles (Fleay, Stage, -p.' 12'j ff.). Just 
subsequent to the Queen's death, Jan. 30, 1603-4, they were 
reorganized as The Children of her Majesty's Revels, with Samuel 
Daniel as censor (Fleay, Stage, p. 184 ; Hazlitt, Drama and Stage 
40). On Jan. 4, 1609-10, Field became their manager, under 
a new patent granted to Philip Rossiter and others, establishing 
the company at Whitefriars (Collier, Hist, of Eng. Dram. i. 352 ; 
Stage, p. 185). They brought out, in all, three plays for Jonson : 
Cynthia's Revels, 1600; Poetaster, 1601 ; Epiccene, 16 10 (Fleay, 
Drama i. 348-9). Jonson's patronage was probably pointed at 
in Ham. 2. 2 (Fleay, Queen Eliz., Croydon, and the Drama, p. 12). 
The Revels Boys were again organized into the Lady Elizabeths 
Servants, 1613-25; and into Queen Hettrietta's Servants, 1625-42. 
With the closing of the theatres the company ended its long life of 
four-fifths of a century. 

ut sis tu similis &c. Hor. Satires i. 4. 69 ff. 

William Stansby. Stansby started in business as a book- 
seller. In 1609 he appears as a printer, and from that date until 
1638 he printed 154 books. Other important works from his press, 
besides the 161 6 folio of Ben Jonson, are Certayne Masques at the 
Court never yet printed, written by Ben Jonson, Jan. 20, 1 614-15, 
the 1620 quarto oi Epiccene, the 1635 quarto oi Hamlet, and the 
second quarto of Loves Labour 's Lost. 

Dedication. 

Sir Francis Stuart. ' He was a learned gentleman, 
was one of Sir Walter Raleigh's club at the Mermaid-Tavern 
in Friday-street, London, and much venerated by Ben Jonson, 
who dedicated to him his comedy, call'd The Silent Wo?nan : he 
was a person also well seen in marine affairs, was a captain of 
a ship, and bore the office for some time of a vice- or rear-admiral.' 
Anthony Wood, Athen. Oxon. East. vol. i. 203. — W. 

Line 8. by cause. This phrase shows the original form o^ because: 
a prep, by -}- sb. cause ; later the cause or purpose was expressed 
by a subst. governed by of, a dat. infinitive, or a subord. clause 
introduced by that or why. Such subordinate clauses fell into two 



DED.] Notes 125 

classes, one expressing cause or reason, the other purpose. In 
the former that was at length omitted, leaving because only. 

10. this makes : i. e. this is the reason I now summon you to 
what I write, not only asking it as a courtesy, but as a possible 
justification of my abused comedy. Makes is not often so used ; 
but cf The Forest 13, vol. 8. 276 : 

This makes that your affection still be new. 
And that your souls conspire, as they were gone 
Each into other, and had now made one. 

Underwoods 42, vol. 8. 370: 

Which makes that, lighted by the beamy hand 

Of Truth . . . 

She cheerfully supporteth what she rears. 

15. undertaker. Whalley and Cunningham are in doubt as 
to Jonson's meaning in undertaker, but it seems clear enough an 
undertaker would make judgjnents ' in the names of favor ', but 
a judge ' in the names of justice '. This word had many significa- 
tions, but in James's reign it often stood for a particularly disagree- 
able concept. Men who managed elections, seeing that the friends 
of the Court were always in a majority in Parliament, were known 
by this name. A great uproar was raised against them in 16 14. 
Cf Epiccene 4. 5. 318 : ' When a man undertakes for you.' Volp. 
3. 5, p. 245: 'I know it; and dare undertake for her.' D. A. 
2. I, p. 39: 

He shall but be an undertaker with me 
In a most feasible business. 

Ded. of Poet., p. 365 : 'For whose innocence . . . you were once 
a noble and timely undertaker to the greatest justice.' 
Cat. 3. I, p. 235, Cicero says: I have 

No forged tables 
Of long descents, to boast false honours from, 
Or be my undertakers to your trust. 
Disc. 140, vol. 8. 204 : 'Fierce undertakers' in philosophy. 

16. censure. The use of this word as verb and noun to mean 
judge 2iX\d. judgment is frequent. In Sej. 3- i, p. 73, when the plot 

against Silius ripens in the Senate, Latiaris cries : 

Let him be censured. 
Sej. He hath spoke enough to prove him Caesar's foe. 
Cot. His thoughts look through his words. 
Sej. a censure. 



126 The Silent Woman [ded. 

Silius, knowing the censure will be death, forestalls it by killing 
himself. 

17. changed, Cf. Introd. p. xii ff. 

19. uncertain accusation. Jonson was charged with satirizing 
individuals, living contemporary writers, in his previous comedies, 
Every Man Out, 1599; Cyn.Rev., 1600; and the Poetaster, 1601. 
Marston was probably meant in Clove and Buffone of the first 
of these, Dekker and Marston were certainly meant in Hedon 
and Anaides of the second, and in Demetrius and Crispinus 
of the third. (Cf. The Stage Quarrel between Ben Jonson &{c. 
by R. A. Small.) Jonson had angered not only individuals but the 
professions — lawyers, soldiers, actors. Cf. note ANOTHER 13. 

Prologve. 

In the Elizabethan theatre, after the third blowing of the 
trumpets to gain quiet in the turbulent crowd, the Prologue came 
forward in his black velvet cloak and garland of bays, and 
attempted to gain favor for the play by conciliating his hearers 
with praises, or sketching the coming piece, or, as is often the 
custom with Jonson, teaching a lesson in dramatic criticism. 
Dekker, Guls Horn-Booke, Pr. Wks. 3. 250: 'Present not your- 
selfe on the stage (especially at a new play) untill the quaking 
prologue hath (by rubbing) got color into his cheekes, and is 
ready to give the trumpets their Cue, that hees upon point to 
enter.' 

2. content tlie people. Jonson repeats this idea often. The 
source is Andria, Prologue : 

Id sibi negoti credidit solum dari, 
Populo ut placerent quas fecisset fabulas. 

Every Man Out, Induct., p. 20, Asper : 

And I will mix with you in industry 
To please : but whom ? attentive auditors, 
Such as will join their profit with their pleasure, 
And come to feed their understanding parts. 

ATag. Lady, Induct., p. 6 : 

Damplay. You have heard, boy, the ancient poets had it in 
their purpose still to please this people, &c. 

3. wine and bayes. King James awarded Jonson, in 16 16, 



PROL.] Notes 127 

100 marks annually; in March, 1630, Charles changed the annuity 
from marks to pounds, and added a tierce of canary. 

4. sect is unusual in the unreligious sense of ' company'. 
Cf. Lear 5. 3. 18: 

We'll wear out, 
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones 
That ebb and flow by the moon. 

9. cookes tastes. Neptune's Triumph, vol. 8. 24: 

Cook. There is a palate of the understanding, as well as of the 
senses. The taste is taken with good relishes, &c. 

15. he knew. The antecedent of he is who of the preceding 
line. The sentence is loosely constructed. 

18. salt. Cf. Poems by John Cleaveland (1668), An Elegy upon 
Ben Jonson, p. 39 : 

'Tis true thou hast some sharpness, but thy salt 
Serv'd but with pleasure to reform the fault, 
Men were laugh'd into vertue, but none more 
Hated fool acted, then were such before. 

20. cates. Jonson is fond of this word figuratively used. 
Every Man Out, Induct. 19 : 

Mean cates are welcome still to hungry guests. 
Cf. the famous pun, Tam. Shrew 2. i. 190. 

21. far fet . . . deare-bought. Lyly, Euphues (1579), Arber, 
p. 93 : ' Farre fet and deere bought is good for Ladyes.' Jonson 
used this old saw again in Cyn. Rev. 4. i, p. 273: 'Marry, and 
this may be good for us ladies ; for it seems 'tis far fet by their stay.' 
Cf. Anat. of Ab., p. 33, concerning English attire : ' We are so 
surprised in Pride, that if it come not from beyond the seas, it 
is not worth a straw. And thus we impouerish our selues in 
buying their trifling merchandizes more pleasant than necessarie, 
and inrich them, who rather laugh at vs in their sleeues than 
otherwise . . . But "farre fetched and deare boughte" is good for 
Ladyes, they say.' 

23. citie-wires. Cf Marmion's Holland's Leaguer 2.3: 

And haue thy seuerall gownes and Tires take place 
It is thy owne, from all the City-wires, 
And summer birds in Town, that once a year 
Come up to moulter. 

Cf. note 2. 5. 78 for use of wire. 



128 The Silent Woman [prol, 

24. Whitefriars. Little is known of this theatre, of which the 
present reference is the first after the mention of its destruction 
in 1583 with four others, by Richard Rawlidge in A Monster lately 
found out. Cf. Fleay, Stage, pp. 35 flf. ; Malone's Shak. (Boswell) 
3. 52 ; Collier, Drama and Stage 3. 103. It was used as early 
as 1574 by Howard's men, and was situated in Whitefriars, 
a precinct or liberty between Fleet Street and the Thames, the 
Temple Walls and Water Lane, named from the Carmelites' or 
White Friars' Church, called ' Fratres Beatae Mariae de Monte 
Carmeli,' first founded by Sir Walter Gray in 1241. The privileges 
of sanctuary, which this precinct possessed, were in 1608 confirmed 
and enlarged by royal charter. Fraudulent debtors, gamblers, 
prostitutes, and rascals of every description, formed here a com- 
munity of their own, adopted the language of pickpockets, openly 
resisted execution of the law, and gave the locality the cant name 
'Alsatia'. The outrages grew so uncontrolled that in 1697 
Charles II abolished its privileges and dispersed the inhabitants. 
Cf. Jonson, -£)!>/^. 12, vol. 8, 150; The Woman Captain (1680); 
Shadwell, Squire of Alsatia (1688). Walter Scott's Fortunes of 
Nigel, eh. 17, describes the liberty in detail at the time of James I. 

26. eate a weeke at ord'naries. Volp. 5. 2, p. 300: 

Sir p. O, I shall be the fable of all feasts. 

The freight of the gazetti, ship boys' tale : 
And, which is worse, even talk for ordinaries. 

Dekker, Guls Horne-Booke, ch. 5, describes ordinaries of various 
prices : ' an ordinary of the largest reckoning, whither most of 
your worthy gallants do resort ' ; a twelve-penny ordinary fre- 
quented by ' the justice of peace or young knight ' ; and a three- 
penny ordinary ' to which your London Usurer, your stale batchelor, 
and your thrifty attorney do resort'. The ordinary had meant 
originally an ordinary meal, a table dhdte', later, the place where 
such a meal might be had. In Jonson's time, when the more 
expensive ordinaries were frequented by men of fashion, the term 
became synonymous with gambling-house. Dekker writes further 
in Lanthorne and Candle Light, Pr. Wks. 3. 221 : 'An Ordinary 
was the only Rendevouz for the most ingenious, most terse, most 
trauaild, and most phantastick gallant : the only booke-sellers shop 
for conference of the best Editions, that if a woman (to be a Lady) 



PROL.] Notes ' 129 

would cast away herself vpon a Knight, there a man should heare 
a Catalogue of most of the richest London widowers.' Cf. Wm. 
Cartwright, The Ordinary, Haz.-Dods., vol. 1 2 ; and The Fortunes 
of Nigel, ch. 12. 

Another [Prologue]. 

In the folio of 1692 is a stanza by Beaumont modeled on 
this second prologue : 

UPON THE SILENT WOMAN. 

Hear you bad Writers, and though you not see, 
I will inform you where you happy be : 
Provide the most malicious thoughts you can, 
And bend them all against some private man. 
To bring him, not his Vices, on the Stage ; 
Your Envy shall be clad in some poor Rage, 
And your expressing of him shall be such. 
That he himself shall think he hath no touch. 
Where he that strongly writes, although he mean 
To scourge but Vices in a labour'd Scene, 
Yet private Faults shall be so well exprest 
As men do act 'em, that each private Breast, 
That finds these Errors in it self, shall say, 
He meant me, not my Vices, in the Play. 

2. profit and delight. Horace, Ars Poet. 343, 344 : 

Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, 
Lectorem delectando pariterque monendo. 

Jonson's translation, vol. 9. 107 : 

But he hath every suffrage, can apply 
Sweet mixt with sour to his reader so 
As doctrine and delight together go. 

Volp.^ Prologue : 

In all his poems still hath been this measure. 
To mix profit with your pleasure. 

S. of News, Epilogue : 

Thus have you seen the maker's double scope, 
To profit and delight. 

Love's Triumph, vol. 8. 85 : 'AH Representations, especially those 
of this nature in court, public spectacles, either have been, or 
ought to be, the mirrors of man's life, whose ends, for the excel- 



130 The Silent Woman [prol, 

lence of their exhibitors . . . ought always to carry a mixture of 
profit with them, no less than dehght.' 

4. taxe the crimes : i. e. censure evil doings without incrimi- 
nating any particular person. Cf. Horace, Sat. 2, i. 83 ff. : 

Esto, si quis mala ; sed bona si quis 
ludice condiderit laudatus Caesare? Si quis 
Opprobriis dignum latraverit, integer ipse ? 
Martial 10. 33. 10: 

Hunc servare modum nostri novere libelli, 
Parcere personis, dicere de vitiis. 
Jonson reiterates this theory of satire, Poet., p. 510 : 
Sharp, yet modest rhymes 
That spare men's persons, and but tax their crimes. 
Apol. Dial, p. 514: 

My books have still been taught 
To spare the persons, and to speak the vices. 

Mag. Lady 2. i, p. 47 : 

Pro. a play, though it apparel and present vices in general, 
flies from all particularities in persons. 
So also Disc. 144, vol. 9. 210. 

7. On forfeit of yourselves. As a reminder of the time 
when men might sell themselves for debt, and as a thrust at 
extravagant wagers, we find this expression recurring in the old 
plays. For other examples, cf. 4. i. 151 : 'play the mountebank. 
. . . while I Hue'; 4. 5. 26: 'thou shalt be his foole for euer'; 
5. 4. 170: 'thou shalt deserue mee, and haue mee ' ; 4. 5. 190: 
' I will become whose slaue you will giue me to, foreuer.' 

8. maker: i.e. 'poet.' Cf. Disc. 146, vol. 9.212: 'a poet is 
that, which by the Greeks is called Kar e^oxrjv O noiHTHS, a maker.' 

10. truths: i.e. facts, and so line 7 true becomes 'actual 
occurrence '. .S". of News, Prologue (For the Court), vol. 5. 159 : 

We . . . shew you common follies, and so known. 
That though they are not truths, the innocent Muse, 
Hath made so like, as phant'sy could them state, 
Or poetry, without scandal, imitate. 

13. that he meant him or her. Cf Dedic. 19, note. Years 
later, in 1632, Jonson wrote, Mag. Lady 2. i, p. 46 : 

Dam. But whom doth your poet mean now by this master 
Bias .? what lord's secretary doth he purpose to personate or 
perstringe .'' 



PROL.] The Silent Woman 131 

Boy. You might as well ask me, what alderman, or alderman's 
mate, he meant by sir Moth Interest . . . 

Pro. It is an insidious question, brother Damplay : iniquity 
itself would not have urged it. It is picking the lock of the scene, 
not opening it with a key. A play, though it apparel and present 
vices in general, flies from all particularities in persons. Would 
you ask of Plautus, and Terence, if they both lived now, who 
were Davus or Pseudolus in the scene, who Pyrgopolinices or 
Thraso ? 

14. they make a libell. Mag. Lady 2. i, p. 47 refers to 
this prologue : 

Dam. Why, I can fancy a person to myself, boy, who shall 
hinder me ? 

Boy. And in not publishing him, you do no man an injury. 
But if you will utter your owne ill meaning on that person under 
the author's words, you make a libel of his comedy. 

Dam. O, he told us that in a prologue^ long since. 

Epig. 30, vol. 8. 160, To Parson Guilty. 

Guilty, be wise ; and though thou knowest the crimes. 
Be thine, I tax, yet do not own my rhymes : 
'Twere madness in thee, to betray thy fame. 
And person to the world, ere I thy name. 

Act I. Scene I. 

MN. making himself ready. This is the usual way of saying 
'dressing himself. D. A. 3. i, p. 87 : 

Wit. Is it not high time to be making ready .? 

Unready is used in the opposite sense, e.g. Bar. Fair i. i, 
P- 374: 

Lit. Cut thy lace. 

Mrs. Lit. No, I'll not make me unready for it. 

and half-ready, 'half-dressed', as in W. is a Weathercock i. i. 

Boy. The gallants had Irish foot-boys to attend their horses, 
and French pages to carry their cloaks. Dekker, Guls Horn-Booke, 
Pr. Wks. 2. 230: 'The old worme-eaten Farmer (his father) bee 
dead, and left him fiue hundred a yeare, onely to keep an Irish 
hobby, an Irish horse-boy, and himselfe (like a gentleman).' He 
goes on to advise a gull to call his page not by a name, as it 
seems too familiar, but ' boy '. Cf. Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 238 : 

Mer. What (art thou) to the lady nymph you serve? 



132 The Silent Woman [act i 

Cup. Troth, boy, page, and sirrah: these are all my titles. 
Mer. Thou hast not altered thy name . . . ? 
Cup. O, no, that had been supererogation ; you shall never 
hear your courtier call but by one of these three. 

Ibid. 2. I, p. 247, Asotus calls his page by name, 'Prosaites !' 
Whereupon Amorphus cries, ' Fie 1 I premonish you of that : in 
the court, boy, laquey, or sirrah ! ' Cf. Epicoene 4. 4. 98 ff.. Daw 
and La-Foole's ' boys '. 

6. the dangerous name of a Poet. Dekker, Horn-Booke, Pr. 
Wks. 2. 243 : ' You may abuse the workes of any man ; depraue 
his M'ritings that you cannot equall, and purchase to your selfe in 
time the terrible name of a seuere Criticke ; nay, and be one of the 
Colledge ; if youle be liberall inough : and (when your turne 
comes) pay for their suppers.' 

8. wot. This is 2nd pers. sing. The conjugation of wit in 
pres. sing, is rightly ist pers. wot, 2nd pers. wost or wottest, 3rd 
pers. wot or wotteth. Cf. however Discourse betwixt Wit and Will, 
Nicholas Breton: 'But wot you who it is?' Cori'ol. 4. i. 27: 
' You wot well my hazards still have been your solace.' 

11. thinke. Notice the absolute use of the verb. Thus used, 
it means 'believe', as i. 3. 5. 

12. rack'd out of you. Despite the legislation against this 
treatment of criminals in the reign of Elizabeth, it was not done 
away with until long after Epicoene appeared. It played an 
important part in the trial following the Gunpowder Plot of 
Nov. 5, 1605, and Francis Bacon himself used it years later. 
Dekker, The Dead Tearme, Pr. Wks. 4. 11: 'I doe not pine to 
see that Ancient and oldest Sonne of mine, with his limbes broken 
to pieces (as if he were a male-factor and hadde beene tortured on 
the Germaine Wheele).' The expression was used conventionally. 
Mag. Lady i. i, p. 20: ' Spare the torture, I do confess without 
it.' Troil. and Cress, i. 2. 151 : 

Pan. I must needs confess, . . . 
Cres. Without the rack. 

16. perruke. About the middle of the sixteenth century wear- 
ing perukes became the fashion. Immense ones with curls falling 
upon the shoulders were worn 1 660-1 725, and later less aggressive 
sorts. They are still worn by the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of 
the House of Commons, judges, barristers, &c. The satirists 



sc. i] Notes 133 

inveighed against the custom often, and Shakespeare did not fail to 
notice it. In Elizabeth's time many were sandy-coloured out of 
compliment to her. Stubbes says that children were lured into out- 
of-the-way places by envious women to have their hair cut for wigs. 
Much Ado 2. 3. 36: Benedict. 'Her hair shall be of what 
colour it please God.' Two G. of Ver. 4. 4. 194 : 

Julia. Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow: 
If that be all the difference in his love, 
I'll get me such a coloured periwig. 

22. rushes. This common floor-covering in the sixteenth and 
early seventeenth centuries, left by careless housekeeping to gather 
foulness, and only once in a while swept out into the street, must 
have been a disease-breeding nuisance. From the time of Erasmus 
until they were finally done away with, they were condemned as un- 
clean by all thoughtful writers, i Hen. /F 3. i. 214; Cjym. 2. 
2. 12; Rom. and Jul. i. 4. 35: 

Romeo. A torch for me : let wantons light of heart 
Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels. 

Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 256 : 

Pro. All the ladies and gallants be languishing upon the rushes, 
like so many pounded cattle, 

28. the plague. The Plague, or Black Death, entered Eng- 
land at a port of Dorsetshire — said in the Eulogium to have been 
Melcombe (Weymouth) — in the beginning of Aug. 1348. Before 
the end of the year it reached London. It was part of a wave of 
infection which passed over Europe from the remote East, and was 
sometimes called the Oriental, Levantine, or Bubonic Plague. 
Jonson saw London pass through several visitations — 1580-2; 
1592 till the end of the century; 1603 with a mortality of 38,000; 
1625, the third great London plague, with 35,417 deaths; 1636, 
the fourth great plague of London, with a mortality of 10,400 ; in 
1637, 3,082 people died of it; in 1647 occurred the fifth epidemic, 
with 3,597 deaths; in 1664-5 came the Great Plague of London, 
when 68,596 people out of a population of 460,000 died. It is 
supposed that two-thirds had fled the city. 

Creighton, History of Epidemics (i. 493), writes of the lesser 
visitations subsequent to the fearful plague of 1603, and covering 
the year in which our comedy was played : ' There was little 



134 T^^^ Silent Woman [act i 

plague in 1604, and not much in 1605; but in 1606 the infec- 
tion again became active, and continued at its endemic level for 
some five or six years.' He records the annual deaths thus : 1606, 
2,124; 1607, 2,352; 1608, 2,262; 1609,4,240; 1610, 1,803. 
This controverts Gifford's statement that there were no cases of 
plague in London after 1603-4. Cunningham has a note to the 
effect that on September ist of 1609 John Murray wrote to the 
Earl of Salisbury saying that the king desired him to ' come no 
nearer London than Kensington in his way to Hampton Court for 
fear of the plague.' In 1608 Dekker wrote in The Dead Tearnie, 
Pr. Wks. 8. 'j'j : ' Sickness hath dwelt a long time in thy Chambers, 
she doth now walke still in a ghostly and formidable shape uppe 
and down my streets. But woe to mee (unfortunate Citty) shall 
wee neuer shake handes with her and part ? ' Dekker s book 
descriptive of the plague of 1602 is T/ie Wo?ider_/ul Veare, Pr. Wks., 
vol. i; and that of 1625, The Rod /or Runaway es^ vol. 4, where, 
p. 282, he records: 'We are punished with a Sicknesse, which is 
dreadful three manner of ways : In the generall spreading ; in the 
quicknesse of the stroke; and in the terror which waits upon it. 
It is generall : for the spotted wings of it couer all the face of the 
kingdome. It is quicke : for it kills suddenly ; it is full of terror, 
for the Father dares not come near the infected Son, nor the Son 
come to take a blessing from the Father, lest he be poysoned by it.' 
The Century Diet, describes at length a typical case of the plague. 
. 34. horse-race or hunting-match. Disc. 163, vol. 9. 
223 : ' What need we know any thing that are nobly born, m.ore 
than a horse-race, or a hunting-match, our day to break with 
citizens, and such innate mysteries.' For a description of horse 
racing see Strutt, Sports and Past., pp. 32 ff., and Ejicyc. Brit, under 
Race. In the reign of James I public races were established in 
many parts of the kingdom, but it was not really a national pastime 
until Charles II established Newmarket, which became a very 
famous resort. In 1658 Cromwell issued a proclamation 'pro- 
hibiting horse-races in England and Wales for eight months'. 
There is A Discource of Horsemanshippe (1593-4), by Gervaise 
Markham, and a Cavelarice, or the arte afid knowledge belonging to 
the Horse-ryder (1607). For the distinctly English sport of 
hmiting, cf. Thornbury, Sh. Eng. i. 402 fF. ; Strutt, Sports and 
Past., ch. I. 



sc. i] Notes 135 

35. Puppy or Pepper-corne. Three favorite horses are 
mentioned in Ignoramus, but a much more copious list may be 
found in Shirley's Hyde-Parke. Whitemane was a very noted racer. 
In some manuscript memoirs of Sir H. Eynes the following 
passage occurs : ' Alsoe in these-.my trobles with my wife, I was 
forced to give my lord of Holdernes my grey running horse called 
Whitemayne for a gratuity, for which I might have had £100.' — 
G. There is a reference to pepper-corne in i Henry IV 3. 3. 8 : 

Fal. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is 
made of. I am a pepper-corn, a brewer's horse. 

39. bowler. Evidences are numerous as to the popularity of 
bowling and the unfriendly attitude of satirists. Cf. Strutt, Sports 
and Fast., p^p. 86, 216. HoweW, londi'nopoh's, p. '^gg : 'Within the 
City what variety of bowling-allies there are, some open, some 
covered. There are tennis-courts, shuffle-boards, playing at 
cudgels, cock-fightings, a sport peculiar to the English, and so is 
bear and bull-baytings, there being not such dangerous dogs and 
cocks anywhere else.' Gosson, School of Abuse (1579): 'Com- 
mon bowling-alleys are priuy mothes that eat up the credit of 
many idle citizens, whose gaynes at home are not able to weigh 
downe theyr losses abroad. Oh, what a wonderful change is this 1 
our wrestling at armes is turned to wallowing in ladies' laps, our 
courage to cowardice, our running to royot, our bowes into bowls, 
and our darts into dishes.' better. Let Dekker be sufficient 
witness that betting was a great evil among London gallants of the 
time. Lanthorne and Cajidle- light, Pr. Wks. 3. 221 : ' The voider 
hauing cleered the table, Cardes and Dice (for the last Messe) are 
serued vp to the boord : they that are ful of coyne, drawe they that 
haue little, stand by&giue ay7?ie ; they shuffle zxvd. cut on one side,' &c. 
Bel-man of london, ibid. 3. 132 : 'The Dyeing cheator, and the 
cozening Card-player, walke in the habites of Gentlemen, and cary 
the faces of honest men. So likewise doe those that are Students in 
the Vincents Lawe : whose Inne is a Bowling Alley, whose books 
'are bowles, and whose law cases are lurches and rubbers. The 
pastime of bowles is now growne to a common exercise, or rather 
a trade of which some of all companies are free ; the sport is not 
so common as the cozenage vsed in it, which to haue it Hue with 
cre[flyt and in a good name is called the Vincent Law.' There 
fol!r Ws a description of the game, and the cheaters at it. greene. 



136 The Silent Woman [act i 

Many of the nobility had these places for bowling in the open air ; 
alleys were not used until difficulty in maintaining greens made alleys 
necessary for the general run of players. Stow says that Henry VIII 
added bowHng alleys to Whitehall when he made improvements 
there. 

40. fashionable men. Among the satirists inveighing against 
men of fashion Dekker stands first with his oft-quoted Guh Horyi- 
Booke ; excellent satire of a few years later is Earle's Micro-Cosmo- 
graphy. Idleness, which True-wit scores here, is exposed in 
Dekker's description of a typical day's routine. Rising a little 
before noon, the man of fashion goes to Paul's Walk to hear the 
news and show his clothes ; he rides to the ordinary for midday 
dinner, gossips, &c. ; once more at home, he changes his clothes 
and goes to the play on horseback, not ' to taste vaine pleasures 
with a hungry appetite: but onely as a Gentleman to spend 
a foolish houre or two, because you can doe nothing else. Then 
to the tauern for supper, and a whole euening as you choose for 
idleness '. Dekker derides fashion in more prosy, allegorical 
style under ' Lying ' in the second part of The Seven Deadly Si'nnes, 
Pr. Wks. 2, and 'Apishness', where, on p. 57, he describes the 
Gallant as ' but yong, for hees a feirse, dapper fellow, more light 
headed than a Musitian : as phantastically attired as a Court 
leaster : wanton in discourse : lasciuious in behauiour : iocund in 
good companie : nice in his trenches, & yet he feedes verie 
hungerly on scraps of songs : . . . yet much about the yeare when 
monsieur came in, he was begotten, betweene a French Taylor, 
and an English Court Seamster '. 

43. the other. Here, as also in 2. 3. 90, a pi. form; 
cf. Abbott, § 12. 

44. grey heads and weake hammes. C^. As You Like It 

2. 7. 157 fr. 

47. I. The first pers. pron. is thus written by Jonson for ' aye '. 
Rom. and Jul. 3. 2. 45 : 

Jul. Hath Romeo slain himself? say thou but 'I', 
And that bare vowel ' I ' shall poison more 
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice: 
I am not I, if there be such an 1. 

50. sleepe all the terme. Before the present Judicature Act 
of 1873 and 1875 there were four terms of court yearly, and hey 



sc. i] Notes 137 

marked the time of greatest resort to, and business in, London : 
Hilary term, Jan. 11-31; Easter term, Apr. 15-May 8; Trinity, 
May 22-June 12] Michaelmas, Nov. 2-25. Nares : 'The law 
terms were formerly the great times of resort to London, not only 
for business, but pleasure. They were the harvest times of various 
dealers, particularly booksellers and authors.' Cf. Middle ton's 
play, Michaelmas Term.', Dekker, The Dead Tearme or Westmin- 
ster's Complaint for Long Vacations and Short Tearmes, Pr. Wks. 
4. 24 ff. ; and Greene, A Peak of Villanies rung out, being 
Musicall to all Gentlemen, Lawyers, Farmers, and all sorts of 
People that come up to the Tearme. 

51-2. O, Clerimont, this time. The sincerity which makes 
these words of True-wit's solemn and unsatiric, is found in but few 
of his speeches, as 4. 6. 61 and 5. 3. 4. 

53. fineliest. Such a superlative Jonson forms again in 
' eagerliest ', 2. 2. 10 1. 

57. common disease. A 'failing' or 'fault' in common, as in 
I. I. 149. Cf. Poet. 2. I, p. 405: ''Tis the common disease of all 
your m.usicians, that they know no mean, to be entreated either to 
begin or end.' Bar. Fair 3. i, p. 417: 'But you are a modest 
undertaker, by circumstances and degrees; come, 'tis disease in 
thee, not judgment.' 2 Hen. IV i. 2. 136 : ' An't please you, it is 
the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am 
troubled, withal.' 

62. Plutarchs moralls. The popularity of this ethical treatise 
is witnessed to in this play by frequent reference, e.g. 2. 3. 44, 
4. 4. 92 : 'This work had been published in folio, in 1603, and 
is still regarded, like the other versions from the same industrious 
hands, as a precious treasury of genuine English. Plutarch's 
Morals, translated into English, by Philemon Holland, Doctor in 
Physike.' — C. 

64. Talke me of pinnes, and feathers. Later editions have 
all inserted to before me, making the pron. an indir. obj. after talke. 
But it is a fair example of an old dative as it stands; cf. 3. 3. 65 
and Abbott, § 220. Earle echoes True-wit's suggestion for con- 
versation in Micro-C. no. i^, A Gallant: 'Hee learnes the beast 
oathes . . . His other talke is Ladies and such pretty things, or 
some iest at a Play.' pins, as a purely feminine article, neces- 
sary and costly, are often mentioned in the old plays. Heywood, 

K 



138 The Silent Woman [act i 

Four P. P., Haz.-Dods. i. 249 flf.; Downfall of Robert, Earl of 
Huntingdon (1598), Haz.-Dods. 8. 161. feathers were worn 

by men in their hats and caps, single or in plumes; by women 
in fans, coiffures, &c. Marston, Malcontent 5.2: 'No fool but 
has his feather; even so, no woman but has her weakness and 
feather too.' Cf. note 2. 2. 109. 

70. colledge. Cf. Introd. Ixx for what is known of the institu- 
tion over which Lady Haughty presided. College is a word much 
abused by Jonson and his contemporaries. Dekker, Guh Horn-Booke, 
Pr. Wks. 2, Proemium : ' A fig therefore for the new-found Colledge 
of Criticks.' Ibid. Seven Deadly Sinnes, p. 52 : 'For as Letchery is 
patron of all your suburb Colledges, and sets up Vaulting-houses, 
and Dauncing-Schooles ... so Sloth is a founder of the Almes- 
houses.' Marston, Malcontent, Induction : ' I am no great cen- 
surer; and yet I might have been one of the college of critics.* 
D. A. 2. 3, pp. 67 if. pictures an academy for women in which they 
may learn matters of deep moment : 

Such rare receipts she has, sir, for the face, 

Such oils, such tinctures, such pomatums, 

Such perfumes, med'cines, quintessences, et caetera; 

And such a mistress of behaviour, 

She knows from the duke's daughter to the doxy, 

What is their due just, and no more. 

S. of News 4. I, p. 266, the founding of a canter's college is pro- 
posed. Epig. 131, vol. 8. 236: The meat-boat of bear's college, 
Paris-garden. 

73. court. Probably Whitehall. 6". of News i. i, p. 165, 
Thomas names as the four cardinal quarters where news may be 
always found, ' The Court, sir, Paul's, Exchange, and Westminster- 
hall.' 

80. masculine or hermaphroditicall authority. Dekker, 
Seven Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2. 59, scores women for their 
manishness : ' For the same reason are women. Mens Shee Apes, 
for they will not bee behind them the bredth of a Taylor's yard 
(which is nothing to speake of) in anie new-fangled vpstart fashion.' 
Stubbes says even more harshly, Anat. of Al).,^). 68: ' Women also 
there haue dublettes and ierkins as men haue here, buttoned vp the 
breast, and made with wringes, welts, and pinions, on the shoulder 
points, as mannes apparel is, for all the world ; and though this be 



sc. i] Notes 139 

a kind of attire appropriate only to a man, yet they blush not to 
wear it; ... Wherefore, these women may not improperly bee 
called hermaphroditi, that is monsters of both kinds, halfe women, 
halfe men.' Cf. note i. i. 5 in S. 0/ News, ed. Winter, p. 133. 

88. painted and perfum'd. Jonson had an astounding 
knowledge of cosmetics. Women's use of them is one of his 
favorite subjects of satire. His heroines discuss cosmetics : Fulvia 
and Galla, Cat. 2, i; Livia and her physician Eudemus, Sej. 2. i; 
Wittipol in disguise and the ladies of the academy, D. A. 4. i, &c. 
Shakespeare noticed this failing of his country-women, e.g. L.L.L. 
4. 3. 259 : ' painting and usurping hair ' ; Sonnet 68. 2 if. : 
'Before the bastard signs of fair were born,' and Mer, of Ven. 
3. 2. 73 ff. 

Dekker, The Biuels last Will and Testament, Pr. Wks. 3, makes 
his hero 'the founder and Vpholder of Paintings, Davbings, 
Plaisterings, Pargettings, Purflings, Cerusings, Cementing, Wrinkle- 
fillings, and Blotchings vp of old, decayed, and weather-beaten 
Faces '. A7iat. of Ab. 64 fF, : ' The women of Ailgna vse to colour 
their faces with certain oyles, liquors, vngents, and waters made to 
that end, whereby they think their beautie is greatly decored.' 

The Elizabethans' love of perfume was barbaric, and not 
altogether unrelated to the fact that their manner of living was 
unsanitary, and indoor air always more or less tainted. Drake, 
Sh. and his Times, p. 395 : ' Perfumed bracelets, necklaces, and 
gloves were favorite articles. " Gloves as sweet as damask roses ", 
form part of the stock of Autolycus, and Mopsa tells the Clown 
that he promised her " a pair of sweet gloves". The queen in this, 
as in most other luxuries of dress, set the fashion; for Howes 
informs us that, in the fifteenth year of her reign, Edward Vere, 
Earl of Oxford, presented her with a pair of perfumed gloves 
trimmed with four tufts of rose-coloured silk, in which she took 
such pleasure that she was always painted with those gloves on her 
hands, that their scent was so exquisite that it was ever after called 
the Earl of Oxford's perfume.' 

Stubbes enumerates perfume as one of the Abuses, p. 76: 'Is 
not this a certen sweete Pride to haue cynet, muske, sweet powders, 
fragrant Pomanders, odorous perfumes, & such like, wherof the 
smel may be felt and perceiued, not only ouer the house, or place, 
where they be present, but also a stones cast of almost, yea, the 

K 'i 



140 The Silent Woman [act i 

bed wherein they haue layed their delicate bodies, the place where 
they haue sate, the clothes, and thinges which they haue touched, 
shall smel a weeke, a moneth, and more, after they be gon. But 
the Prophet Esais telleth them, instead of their Pomanders, musks, 
ciuits, balmes, sweet odours and perfumes, they shall haue stench 
and horrour in nethermost hel.' 

92. Song. 'The musical ability of choristers, accustomed to 
sing antiiems and madrigals, encouraged the poets to introduce 
those lyrics into plays which form so effective an element in their 
scenes,' Symonds, Predecessors 0/ Sh., p. 241. And so one of the 
Queen's Revels' Boys sang this song, a charming example of 
Jonson's lyrical ability. Its source is given Introd. p. Iv. Herrick 
imitated the verses. Flecknoe's Address to the Duchess of Richmond 
runs : 

Poor beauties ! whom a look, a glance 
May sometimes make seem fair by chance. 
Or curious dress, or artful care, 
Cause to look fairer than they are 1 
Give me the eyes, give me the face; 
To whom no art can add a grace ; 
And me the looks, no garb nor dress, 
Can ever make more fair, or less. — G. 

102. adulteries. N. E. D. cites another example of this un- 
usual significance. Lady's Calling (1673), 2. 3, § 20. 93 : ' Nor must 
she think to cure this by any the little adulteries of art.' 

123. Aldgate. Originally Alegate, 'a gate open to all', or 
'free gate', the east gate of old London wall, situated near the 
junction of Leadenhall Street, Houndsditch, Whitehall, and the 
Minories. The older gate which Stow describes (i. 15 ff.) was 
taken down in 1606, and the new one built to which Jonson refers. 
Two Roman soldiers stood on the outer battlements, with stone 
balls in their hands, ready to defend the gate : beneath, in a square, 
was a statue of James I, and at his feet the royal supporters. On 
the city side stood a large figure of fortune, and somewhat lower, 
so as to grace each side of the gate, gilded statues of Peace and 
Charity, copied from the reverses of two Roman coins, discovered 
while digging the new foundation to the gate. The inscription 
read, ' Senatus Populusque Londinensis | Fecit 1609 | Humphrey 
Weld Maior'j. It is worthy of remembrance that over the old 



sc. i] Notes 141 

gate, torn down in 1606, was the dwelling Chaucer had leased in 
1374, 'the whole of the dwelling-house above the gate of Algate 
with the rooms built over, and a certain cellar beneath the same 
gate, on the South side of that gate, and the appurtenances 
thereof. 

124. the cities Loue, and Charitie. These statues are de- 
scribed carefully by Stow, i. 16 : ' To grace each side of the gate, 
are set two feminine personages, the one southward appearing to 
be Peace, with a silver dove upon dne hand, and a gilded wreath 
or garland in the other. On the north side standeth Charity, with 
a child at her breast, and another led in her hand : implying (as I 
conceive) that where Peace and love, or Charity, do prosper, and 
are truly embraced, that city shall be for ever blessed.' Baedeker, 
London and its Environs : ' The " City's Love and Charity " were 
still standing in 1760, but the next year the gate was pulled down.' 

126. seruant, meaning 'lover', is found times innumerable in 
the old dramatists. Every Man Out 3. 3, p. 1 18 : 

Brisk. A second good-morrow to my fair mistress. 
Saviolina. Fair servant, I'll thank you a day hence. 

Cat. 2. I, p. 222 : 

Sem. When was Quintus Curius, thy special servant, here ? 
FuLTiA. My special servant ! 
Sem. Yes, thy idolater, I call him. 

Case is Altered 2. 3, p. 334 : 

Aug. Come, I will not sue stalely to be your servant, 
But a new term, will you be my refuge? 

Two G. of V. 2. \. 100 : 

Val. Madame and Mistress, a thousand good-morrows . . . 
SiL. Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand. 

136. in complement. Drake, Sh. and his Times, p. 422, defines 
compliment as ' A species of simulation which was carried to an 
extraordinary height in the days of our poet'. Marston says of 
a gallant in Scourge of Villanie (1599), bk. 2, sat. 7 : 

Mark nothing but his clothes, 
His new stampt complement; his common oathes, 
Mark those. 

Dekker, Gtils Horn-Booke : ' You courtiers that do nothing but 
sing the gamut A-Re of comphmental courtesy.' King fohn i. i. 
189: 



142 The Silent Woman [act i 

Bastard. Now your traveller, 

He and his toothpick at my worship's mess, 
And when my knightly stomach is sufficed, 
Why then I suck my teeth and catechize 
My picked man of countries : ' My dear sir,' 
Thus, leaning on mine elbow, I begin, 
' I shall beseech you ' — that is question now ; 
And then comes answer like an Absey book: 
' O sir ', says answer, ' at your best command ; 
At your employment ; at your service, sir ' ; 
' No, sir ', says question, ' I, sweet sir, at yours ' : 
And so, ere answer knows what question would, 
Saving in dialogue of compliment, . . . 
It draws toward supper in conclusion so. 

Jonson makes this ' sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth ' an 
object of satire in Mrs. Otter, La-Foole, Daw, and the 'ladies- 
collegiates '. 

146. night-caps. According to Planch^, 'Night caps are 
first mentioned in the times of the Tudors. They M^ere worn in 
the daytime by elderly men and invalids. They are frequent in 
portraits of the seventeenth century, some of velvet or silk, 
occasionally richly embroidered and edged with lace.' Candido 
says in Dekker's i Honest Whore 3. i : 

Fetch me a night-cap : for I'll gird it close. 
As if my health were queesy. 

150. Fish-wiues, and Orenge-women. In developing the 
idea of Morose's sensitiveness to noise, Jonson mentions the chief 
occupations connected with London streets, no small number, 
since the great body of London retailers were itinerant. Only 
those who had been highly successful attained to the dignity of 
keeping a stall, and in them the loudest voice brought the most 
custom. The narrow streets were full of men, not hurrying to 
and fro, but occupied at some trade in the open air. Addison 
writes. Spectator 251 : ' There is nothing which more astonishes 
a foreigner, and frights a country squire, than the cries of London. 
My good friend Sir Roger often declares that he cannot get them 
out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is 
in town. On the contrary Will Honeycomb calls them Ramage de 
la Vtlle, and prefers them to the sounds of larks and nightingales, 
with the musick of the fields and woods.' Samuel Johnson, 



sc. i] Notes 143 

Adventurer : ' The attention of a new-comer is generally first struck 
by the multiplicity of cries that stun him in the streets.' Cf. 
A. W. Tuer, Old London Street Cries, and Charles Hindley, 
A History of the Cries of London. Hindley gives some of the fish- 
sellers' cries, p. 20 : ' New mackerel ; new Wall-Fleet Oysters ; 
New Flounders ; New Whiting ; New Salmon ; Buy Great Smelts ; 
Buy Great Plaice ; Buy Great Mussels ; Buy Great Eels ; New 
Cod, new; . . . Quicke perawinkells, quick, quick.' On p. 8i 
he quotes from Turner's DisJi of Stuff or a Gallymaifery : 
The fish-wife first begins 

Anye muscles lilly white? 
Herrings, sprats, or place. 

Or cockles for delight, 
Anye welflet oysters ? 

Then she doth change her note: 
She had need to have her tongue be greas'd 
For the rattle in her throat. 
Donald Lupton, Lofidon and the Country Carbonadoed and Quar- 
tred into Seuerall Characters (1632): 'These crying, wandering, 
and trauelling creatures carry their shops on their heads, and their 
storehouse is ordinarily Byllyngsgate or ye Brydge-foot ; and their 
habitation Turnagain Lane. . . . Fiue shillings, a basket, and a good 
cry, are a large stock for them.' The stock-in-trade of the orange- 
women was a favorite fruit at this time. Sir Walter Raleigh is 
given credit for being the first importer. They called attention to 
their wares with * Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons 1 ' 
or according to no. 3 of a British Museum print illustrating with 
woodcuts twelve street cries : 

Fine Sevil oranges, fine lemmons, fine; 
Round, sound, and tender, inside and rine, 
One pin's prick their vertue show: 
They're liquor by their weight, you may know. 

152. Chimney-sweepers. Before daybreak these poor 
fellows were canvassing for custom; they were hired men or 
apprentices, under a master or employer. Deuteromalia : or, the 
Second Part of pleasant Roundelay es (1609): 

The chimney-sweeper all the long day, 
He singeth and sweepeth the soote away ; 
Yet when he comes home altho' he be weary, 
With his sweet wife he maketh full merry, 
Soot — sweep — O ! 



144 The Silent Woman [act i 

154. Broome-men. A cry of these pedlars is given in Three 
Ladies of London (1584), Haz.-Dods., vol. 6 : 

New broomes, green broomes, will you buy any ? 
Come maydens, come quickly, let me take a penny. 

British Museum Print, no. 9 : 

Come buy some broomes, come buy of me : 
Birch, heath, and green none better be ; 
The staves are straight, and all bound sure ; 
Come, maids, my broomes will still endure. 
Old boots or shoes I'll take for broomes, 
Come buy to make clean all your rooms ! 

We find a briefer cry, ' Old shooes for some Broomes, Broomes, 
Broomes ! ' 

155. Costard-monger. This tradesman, originally an itinerant 
apple-seller, had a widespread reputation for noisiness : 

He'll rail like a rude coster monger 

That school boys had cozened of his apples, 

As loud and senseless. 

When a seller of apples, his cry was, * Pippins, fresh pippins ! ' In 
Bar. Fair 2. i, p. 385, he calls, 'Buy any pears, pears, fine, very 
fine pears ? ' and in Turner's Dish 0/ Stuff: 

Ripe, cherry ripe ! 

The coster-monger cries ; 
Pippins fine or pears! 

Another after hies. 
With basket on his head 

His living to advance, 
And in his purse a pair of dice 

For to play at mumchance. 

157. Me thinkes. This expression, which is found also 
3. 6. 39 and 4. i. 32, is a survival of a weak verb in OE. There 
were two verbs allied in form and meaning : p§ncan, pohte, ' think ' ; 
pyncan, piihte, ' seem ', which was impersonal, me pyncp, ' it seems to 
me', having much the same meaning as ic p§nce. Me thinkes 
is from the impers. verb. 

157 fi". a Smith ... or any Hamer-man ... a Brasier. . . 
an Armourer . . . Pewterer. Jonson includes these men as 
provokers of Morose's peace, not so much because of their street 
cries, but because of the intrinsic noisiness of their trades, making 
or mending weapons, kettles, &c., which filled the streets with 



sc. i] Notes 145 

metallic din. A hammer-man may signify the hooper of barrels, 
the shoer of horses, or the artificer in metals. ^The kettle- 
mender was a very vociferous fellow, crying, 'A brass pot or an 
iron pot to mend ! ' The armorer, who was generally foreign, was 
less of an itinerant than the others, and had his shop in the Old 
Exchange. Cooking and table-utensils were made of pewter, and 
the noise of the trade is recorded as early as Lydgate in London 
Lyckpenny : ' Pewter pots they clattered on a heap.' 

159. parish. Dekker describes the parish of this time. The 
Dead Tear me, Pr. Wks. 4. 75 : ' According therefore to the 
Romane custome of Citties, was I diuided into Signories, all of 
them notwithstanding, like so many streames to one Head, 
acknowledging a priority and subiection, to One Greater than the 
rest, and who sitteth aboue them, those Diuisions or Parlages are 
called Wardes, or Aldermanries, being 26 in number ; for by 
24 Aldermen: in whom is represented the dignity of Romaine 
Senafours, and Two Sheriffes, who personate (in theyr Offices and 
places) the Romane Consuls. Then is there a Subdiuision ', for 
these Cantles are againe cut into lesse, being called Parishes, 
which are in number 109 ; which are vnto me like so many little 
Citties within themselues : so beautifyed they are with buildings, so 
furnished with manuall Trades, so peopled with wealthy Cittizens, 
and so pollitikely, wisely and peacebly gouerned.' 

160. shroue-tuesdaies riot. One of the chief events of this 
festival day was, in the words of Lanthorn Leatherhead, Bar. Fair 
5. I, p. 473 : ' the rising of the prentices, and pulling down the 
bawdy houses.' Earle, Micro-C, A Player, no. 21: ' Shroue- 
Tuesdey hee feares as much as the baudes, and Lent is more 
damage to him then the Butcher.' Dekker, Seven Deadly Sinnes, 
Pr. Wks. 2 : ' They presently, like prentices vpon Shroue-tuesday, 
take the law into their hands, and do what they list.' For other 
amusements, cf. Brand, Pop. Antiq. i. 63 ff., and cf. John Taylor 
(folio 1630), p. 115: 'In the morning all the whole kingdom is 
unquiet, but by that time the clocke strikes eleven, which (by the 
help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, then there 
is a bell rung, cal'd pancake-bell, the sound whereof makes 
thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or 
humanitie.' 

161. when the rest were quit. Whalley thinks 'quit' is 



146 The Silent Woman [act i 

' discharged from work '. Coleridge's interpretation is better 
' The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other 
apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone 
was punished under pretext of the riot but in fact for his trade.' 
— Notes on Benjonson, ed. Bohn, p. 415. For ' quit ' in the obsolete 
sense of 'acquit' cf. Abbott, § 342, and Gammer Gurtons 
Needle, ed. Manly, 5. 2. 262 : Bayly. 'Ye shall go quite/ &c. 

162 ff. Trumpet . . . Hau'-boyes, . . . Waights. Whether 
Jonson means here the instruments or the musicians is not quite 
clear. Cf. Mer. of Ven. 2. 5. 30 : ' The vile squealing of the wry- 
neck'd fife.' A trumpet was carried by the vender of hobby-horses, 
who blew upon it intermittently and cried, ' Troop, every one, one ' ; 
there were bands of street musicians called trumpeters. Dekker, 
The Kings Entertainment, Dram. Wks. i. 280: 'The Wayts and 
Hault-boyes of London made the music for the banquet,' Waits 
were originally night-watchmen who announced with a horn that 
they were on watch, but in the seventeenth century regular bands 
of musicians bore the name, and it is still preserved in England as 
applied to persons who sing at Christmas from house to house. 
Rymer, quoted in Chambers's Book of Days, says : ' A wayte, that 
nightelye from mychelmas to Shreue Thorsdaye pipeth the watche 
within this courte fower tymes . . . Also this yeoman waight, at the 
makinge of knyghtes of the Bath, for his attendance vpon them by 
nyght-time, in watchinge in the chappelle, hath he to his fee all the 
watchinge clothing that the knyght shall wear vpon him ' (vol. 2. 
743). Tale of a Tub 3. 3, p. 176 : 

Pan. Dick Toter! 

He was one o' the waights o' the city, I have read o' 'un; 
He was a fellow would be drunk, debauch'd . . . 
His name was Vadian, and a cunning toter. 

Cf. also Shirley, Witty Fair Oiie 4. 2, and Tatler 222. There 
are also some items of interest in Notes and Queries, loth S. 2, 
Dec. 24, 1904. 

166. Bell-man. This night-watchman had been given his 
distinctive instrument in the reign of Mary, and he remained 
a public nuisance until the time of Cromwell. Stow says there was 
one in each ward. Hindley, p. 34, quotes from the British 
Museum Print, no, 2, and Tuer, Old London Street Cries, p. 20 : 



sc. i] Notes 147 

Mayds in your Smocks, Loocke 

Wei to your locke 

Your fire 

And your light, 

& God 

Give you, good-night. 

One o'clock. 

Dekker, Bel-man 0/ London, Pr. Wks. 3. 113 : 'The sound of his 
Voice at the first put me in mind of the day of ludgement ; Men 
(me thought) starting out of their sleepes, at the Ringing of his 
bell, as then they are to rise from their graues at the sound of 
a trumpet. ... I approached neare vnto him, and beheld a man 
with a lanthorne and canale in his hand, a long staffe on his necke, 
and a dog at his tayle. ... I began to talke to my Bel-man, and to 
aske him, why with such a langling, and balling, and beating at 
Mens doores hee went about to waken either poore men that were 
ouerwearyed with labour, or sick men that had most neede of rest ? ' 
The mayor, Sir Henry Barton, had made a law, which remained in 
force three centuries, that at night between All Hallows and 
Candlemas each house had to have a ' lanthorne and a whole 
candell light '. Watchmen whose particular business was to see 
that this rule was obeyed, according to the British Museum Print, 
no. I, admonished the public thus : 

A light here, maids, hang out your light. 
And see your horns be clear and bright. 
That so your candle clear may shine. 
Continuing from six till nine; 
That honest men that walk along. 
May see to pass safe without wrong. 

172. common noises. Dekker gives a vivid account of these 
in Seven Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2. 50 : ' In euery street, carts 
and coaches make such a thundring as if the world ranne vpon 
wheeles . . . Hammers are beating, in one place, Tubs hooping in 
another. Pots clinking in a third, water-tankards running at tilt 
in a fourth : heere are Porters sweating vnder burdens, there 
merchants-men bearing bags of money,' &c. 

178. cryed his games. The bear- ward was accustomed to 
advertise his sport noisily. Cf. Humorous Lovers (16 17): 'I'll 
set up my bills, that the gamesters of London, Horsleydown, 
Southwark, and Newmarket, may come in and bait him here 



148 The Silent Woman [act i 

before the ladies ; but first, boy, go fetch me a bagpipe ; we will 
walk the streets in triumph, and give the people notice of our 
sport.' 

180, bleeding: adj. 'bloody'. I find the same construction 
of the superl. thus formed from the pres. part, in Jeronimo, Haz.- 
Dods. 4. 354 : 'A most weeping creature.' 

181. prize. Pepys describes a prize or contest in his Diary, 
June I, 1663: 'The New Theatre . . . since the king's players 
gone to the Royal one, is this day begun to be employed by the 
fencers to play prizes at. And here I came and saw the first 
prize I ever saw in my life : and it was between one Mathews, 
who did beat at all weapons, and one Westwicke, who was soundly 
cut several times . . . They fought at eight weapons, three boutes 
at each weapon.' Cf. also May 27, 1667. Strutt, Sports and 
Past. 209 ff,, gives an account of the barbarousness of the prizes 
fought by fencers, and of the long apprenticeship necessary to 
become masters of the science of defence, or fencing. 

184. for the bells. Besant, LottdoJi, pp. 105 fi"., has de- 
scribed the city with its never quiet bells as Rabelais' Vile 
Sonnante. There were eighty-nine churches burnt in 1666 ; fifty- 
one were rebuilt. The word_/i?r as here used is noticed by Abbott, 

§ 149- 

185. i'the Queenes time. Elizabeth's death in 1603 made 
a change from the strict attendance at church service. Jonson 
here points to the fact that his contemporaries were growing 
careless in matters of religious observance. 

187. perpetuitie of ringing. The year before Epiccene ap- 
peared we find this allusion in Volp. 3. 2, p. 237 : 

VoLP. Oh, 

Rid me of this my torture, quickly, there; 
My madam, with the everlasting voice : 
The bells, in time of pestilence, ne'er made 
Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion. 

Dekker, Wonder/tdl Feare, Pr. Wh. i. 105: 'And to make this 
dismall comfort more full, round about him Bells heauily tolling in 
one place, and ringing out in another.' Rod for Run-awayes 
(1625), Pr. Wks. 4, scathes the people who left London in terror 
of the plague, but the author knows ' they perceiue the Bels of 
London toll 40 miles oif in their eares '. 



sc. i] Notes 149 

192. tennis-court. The prevalence of tennis in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries is attested in many places. Stow, 
Survey 6. 6: 'Divers fair tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, and a 
cockpit, were added to Whitehall by Henry VIII.' Strutt, Sporls 
and Past., pp. 92 ff,, gives its history. Perhaps the most famous 
literary reference to tennis is that in Henry V i. 2. 256. James I 
said tennis was an ' exercise becoming a prince ', and Pepys re- 
cords, Dec. 2, 1663, that Charles II 'beat three and lost two sets, 
they all, and he particularly playing well '. 

194. trunke. ' There are a people, says Montaigne, where no 
one speaks to the king, except his wife and children, but through 
a trunk.' — G. Jonson makes Dol use one in the Alchem., but the 
same word in News from the New World, vol. 7. 338, means 
* telescope '. 

Act I. Scene II. 

6. masters. Coke defines ' a gentleman to be one qui 
arma gerit, who bears coat armor, the grant of which adds 
gentility to a man's family' (Blackstone, Comm. bk. i, § 405). 
*As for gentlemen, says Sir Thomas Smith, they may be made 
good cheap in this kingdom : for whoever studieth the laws of the 
realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal 
sciences, and to be short, who can live idly, and without manual 
labor and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentle- 
man, he shall be called Master, and shall be taken for a gentleman ' 
(§ 406). Cf. W. and their Ways, p. 324, and the quibbling over the 
word between Launcelot and his father, Mer. of Ven. 2.2. 

9-10. ridiculous acts, and moniments. Morose is not Jon- 
son's first comic martyr; in Every Man Out 3. 2, p. 114, one of 
the rustics who saves Sordido says : ' I'll get our clerk put his 
conversion in the Acts and Monuments.' Jonson, at this time a 
Catholic, may have taken a little justified pleasure in indulging in 
jests at the expense of Fox, so popular an opponent of his faith. 
This book was the butt of much joking, for Stubbes writes, Anat. 
of Ab., p. 185 : ' This maketh the Bible, the blessed Book of God, to 
be so litde esteemed ; that woorthie Booke of Martyrs, made by 
that famous Father & excellent Instrument in God his Church, 
Maister John Fox, so little to be accepted.' Cf. Mayne, City 
Match 2. I. 



150 The Silent Woman [act i 

11. S'lid. Mimic oaths were highly fashionable when Epiccene 
was written. Doubtless the reprehensible habit of Elizabeth influenced 
her people ; as Drake says, her oaths were ' neither diminutive nor 
rare; she never spared them in public or private conversation, 
when she thought they added energy to either'. Epiccene offends 
in the matter of oaths much less than many plays, though comic 
characters marked by the ambition to be original in oaths are not 
wanting — witness Daw and La-Foole. The nobility were chiefly 
satirized for this fault; Dekker, The Dead Tearme, Pr. Wks. 4. 14, 
has Westminster grieve because she is ' haunted with some that are 
called knights only for their swearing '. Anai. of Ab. p. 132 : ' We 
take in vain abuse, and blaspheme, the sacred name of God in our 
ordinarie talke, for euery light trifle ... By continuall vse whereof, 
it is growne to this perfection, that at euery other worde, you shal 
heare either woundes, bloud, sides, harte, nailes, foot, or some other 
part of Christes blessed bodie, yea, sometymes no part thereof 
shalbe left vntorne of these bloudie Villanies, and to sweare by 
God at euery worde, by the World, by S. lohn, by S. Marie, 
S. Anne, by Bread and Salte, by the Fire, or by any other 
Creature, thei thinke it nothynge blame worthie.' Chaucer com- 
plained long before, Pardoner's Tale 12: ' Oure blisful Lordis 
body they to-tere.' 

12. that purpose. Morose's purpose to disinherit his nephew. 

14. false almanack. There were enough errors in the prog- 
nostications of the average almanacs to warrant Hall's Satire on 
Ahnanac Makers, bk. 2. 2. The title-page of an almanac for 
1575, by Leonard Digges, reads: 'A Prognostication euerlastinge 
of right good effect, fruictfully augmented by the auctor contayn- 
ing plain, briefe, pleasante, chosen rules to iudge the Weather by 
the Sunne, Moone, Starres, Comets, Rainbow, Thunder, Cloudes, 
with other extraordinarye tokens, not omitting the Aspects of the 
Planets, with a briefe iudgement for euer, of Plenty, Lucke, 
Sickenes, Dearth, Warres, &c., opening also many natural causes 
to be knowen.' 

15. coronation day to the tower- wharfe. There was 
noise enough on such a gala-day to deafen a less sensitive ear 
than that of Morose; there was noise on street and river, of 
trumpet, drum, fife, ordnance, fireworks, bells. Three Lords and 
Three Ladies of Loiidon (1590), Haz.-Dods., vol. 6: 



sc. ii] Notes 151 

Let nothing that's magnifical 
Or that may tend to London's graceful state, 
Be unperform'd, as showes and solemne feastes, 
Watches in armour, triumphs, cresset, lights, 
Bon-fires, bells, and peales of ordinance 
And pleasure. See that plaies be published, 
Mai-games and maskes, with mirth and minstrelsie. 
Pageants and school-feasts, beares, and puppet-plaies. 

Ordnance was kept at the Tower from early times. Cf. Survey 
I. 96: 'This tower is a citadel to defend or command the city; 
a royal palace for assemblies and treaties; a prison of estate for 
the most dangerous offences; the only place of coinage for all 
England at this time; the armoury for warlike provisions; the 
treasury of the ornaments and jewels of the crown ; and general 
conserver of the most records of the king's courts of justice at 
Westminster.' Ordish, Sh. London, writes, p. 44 : ' Norden's map 
shows several pieces of large ordnance outside the Tower walls in 
East Smithfield.' Paul Hentzner, writing of his visit to the Tower 
about 1597, says : ' On the bank of the Thames close by are 
a great many cannon, such chiefly as are used at sea.' Pepys 
describes the Tower and wharf as they were on Nov. 5, 1664. 
I Hen. VI I. I. 167 : 

Glou. I'll to the Tower with all the haste I can, 
To view the artillery and munition. 

20. more portent. * More ' is here used as the comp. adj. 
' greater '. Mr. Skeat thinks ?no (OE. md) is the comp. of ' many' 
in regard to number, as more (OE. mare) is comp. of ' much ' in 
regard to size. Cf. Abbott, § 1 7, 3. 7. 19, and ' the more reputation ' ; 
also Poe^. Ap. Dial. *a more crown'. King John 2. i. 34: 
'a more requital'; Meas. for Meas. i. 3. 49: 'At our more 
leisure '. Heywood, Edward IV i. 40 (ed. Pearson), ' Much queene, 
I trow'. Cat. 4. I, p. 274: 'A more regard.' 

27. god. In the 1616 folio Cc?^ and Zor^ are printed ^o</ and 
lord, endeavouring to minimize the oaths. Cf. the law passed in 
1605-6, 3 Jac. I, cap. 21, Statutes at Large 3. 61-2 (1770): 'An 
Act to restrain the abuses of players ... for the preventing and 
avoiding of the great abuse of the holy name of God, in Stage- 
plays, Enterludes, May-games, Shews, and such like. Be it enacted 
by our Sovereign Lord the King's Majesty . . . That if at any 



152 The Silent Woman [act I 

time . . . any person or persons do or shall in any Stage-play 
Enterlude, Show, May-game or Pageant jestingly or profanely 
speak or use the holy name of God, or of Christ Jesus, or of the 
Holy Ghost, or of the Trinity . . . shall forfeit for every such 
offense ... ten pounds.' Cf. Hazlitt, Drama and Stage, p. 42. 
Gifford defends Jonson's work during his last twenty-three years as 
' remarkably free from rash ejaculations '. Jonson did not approve 
theoretically of the habit of his contemporaries nor of his own 
characters. In An Epistle to Master Colby to persuade htm to the 
Wars, Underwoods 32, he writes: 

And last blaspheme not; we did never hear 
Man thought the valianter, 'cause he durst swear. 

38. knacke with his sheeres. This habit of the barber is 
noticed, Lyly, My das 3. 2, where the barber Motto says : ' Thou 
knowest, boy, I have taught thee the knacking of the hands.' 
Greens Tu Quoque, Haz.-Dods. 11. 210: 

Cooke. Amongst the rest, let not the barber be forgotten : 
and look that he be an excellent fellow, and one that can snap 
his fingers with dexterity. 

Cunningham quotes Armin's Nest of Ninnies, p. 30 (Sh. Soc. 
Reprint), where a man is described as ' snapping his fingers, 
barber-like, after a dry shaving'. Scott, in Fortunes 0/ Nigel, ch. 
8, introduces Dame Ursula Suddlechop, wife of Benjamin Suddle- 
chop, who is the most renowned barber in all Fleet Street, * her 
thin half-starved partner ', possessing ' the most dexterous snap 
with his fingers of any shaver in London '. 

53. Let it lie vpon my starres to be guiltie. Epiccene 
2. 4. 38, True-wit says: ' I foresaw it, as well as the starres themselues.' 
It is a little strange that Jonson allows True-wit, the scholarly 
character of the play, as well as Clerimont, to betray participation in 
the popular belief in astrology. The Alchem. contains his best 
satire against this and related superstitions. That Shakespeare 
had no faith in this so-called science is shown in the familiar lines 
mjul. Caes. i. 2. 140: 

Cas. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 

I Hen. IV 3. I. 12 fF., Hotspur derides Glendower for be- 
lieving in stellar influence. Stubbes treats it sensibly, if aggres- 
sively, and scores ' astronomers, astrologers, prognosticators (and 



sc. ii] Notes 153 

all other of the same society and brotherhoode, by what name 
or title soeuer they be called).' He argues the impossibility of truth 
in such things, for men would then turn from God to worship the 
stars, which are the handiwork of God, possessing neither life nor 
reason. This argument occupies part 2. 56-66. On p. 63 he says : 
' It is the malice of the deuill, the corruption of our nature, and the 
wickedness of our own harts, that draweth vs to euill, and so to 
shameful destinies and infamous ends, and not the starres or 
planets.' Joseph Hall in Virgidemiarum, bk. 2. sat. 7, writes 
against astrology; cf. Isagoge to the Astral Science (1658), and 
Manual of A strology (1828). 

57. innocent: i.e. 'fool.' 

67. talking sir. The ppl. a. is used for the usual adj. talkative^ 
as bleeding for bloody, supra i. i. 180. The noun sir now occurs 
with modifiers in only a few stereotyped phrases, e.g. 'dear sir', 
'honored sir', &c. Cf. Cyn, Rev. 3. 2, p. 265: 'Here stalks me 
by a proud and spangled sir.' 

77. pretends onely to learning. This was so common a 
failing, according to the author's notion, that many of his men and 
almost all his women are scored for pretence of knowledge. So 
Earle, Micro-C. no. 53, A Pretender to Learning : ' Hee is 
a great Nomen-clater of Authors, which hee has read in generall 
in the Catalogue, and in particular in the Title, and goes seldome 
so far re as the Dedication,' &c. Guls Horn-Booke, Pr. Wks. 2. 
203 : ' You ordinary Guiles, that through a poor and silly ambition 
to be thought you inherit the reuenues of extraordinary wit, will 
spend your shallow censure vpon the most elaborate Poeme so 
lauishly, that all the painted table-men about you, take you to be 
heires apparent to rich Midasse! 

Act I. Scene III. 

14. Decameron of sport. Boccaccio's famous hundred tales, 
published in 1353, had played an important role in English 
literature. Chaucer himself took from him hints for the Canter- 
bury Tales. There was a translation of Les Cent Nouvelles 
in 1557. In 1566 WiUiam Paynter turned many of the Italian 
stories into English in his Palace of Pleasure. Cf. Dunlop, Prose 
Fiction 2. 148. Roger Ascham did not approve of the Italian 

L 



154 The Silent Woman [act i 

influence in England. The Scholemasier, Arber's Reprint, pp. 78 ff.: 
* These bee the inchantments of Circes, brought out of Italie to 
marre mens manners in England ; much, by example of ill life, 
but more by preceptes of fonde bookes, of late translated out of 
Italian into English, sold in euery shop in London. . . . There be 
moe of these vngratious bookes set out in Printe wythin these 
fewe monethes, than haue been sene in England many score 
yeares before. . . . They haue in more reuerence the Triumphes 
of Petrarch : than the Genesis of Moses : They make more 
account of TuUies offices, than S. Paules epistles : of a tale in 
Bocace than a story of the Bible.' 

24. inuited to dinner. The fashionable dinner hour was 
noon or a little before ; supper, at six. Case is Altered 2. 3, 

P- 331: 

AuR. Eat when your stomach serves, saith the physician, 
Not at eleven and six, 

Dekker, Ejiglish Villanies: 'To cherish his young and tender 
muse, he giues him four or six angels ; inuiting him either to stay 
breakfast, or, if the sundial of the house points toward eleuen, 
then to tarry dinner.' 
>/■ 34. do's giue playes. Abbott, §§303-5, treats of the unemphatic 

use of do in affirmative sentences. Its use is frequent in Epiccene — 
'do bear ', i. 4. 40; 'do run away', 2, 2. 61 ; 'do utter', 2. 3. 50; 
'do's refuse', 2. 4. 129; 'do's triumph', 2. 4. 13; 'do expect it', 
3. I. 13 ; *d3 dream', 3. 2. 67 ; 'do take advise', 3. 2. 82. 

36. coaches. In Bar. Fair 4. 3, p. 466, Knockem is 
candid in his views about the use of coaches, elegantly affirming 
that ' they are as common as wheelbarrows where there are great 
dunghills '. Jonson constantly satirizes the popularity of coaches 
among would-be social lights ; indeed, they are decried by all the 
pamphleteers of the day. In regard to the history of this vehicle, 
Drake, p. 415, quotes from the Works of Taylor (1630), p. 240: 
'In the year 1564, one William Boonen, a Dutchman, brought 
first the use of coaches hether, and the said Boonen was Queene 
EHzabeth's coachman : for indeed a coach was a strange monster 
in those days, and the sight of it put both horse and man into 
amazement: some said it was a great crab-shell brought out of 
China, and some imagined it to be one of the Pagan Temples, 
in which the cannibals adored the divell ; but at last those doubts 



sc. Ill] Notes 155 

were cleared, and coach-making became a substantial trade.' 
Gosson has a rhymed arraignment in Pleasant Quippes for Vpstari 
Newfangled Gentlewomen (Hazlitt, 1866), p. 258. Strand. 

What is now a chief thoroughfare of London running east and 
west from Fleet Street to Charing Cross was a wretched street 
before 1532. It was paved in that year ; by another half-century 
it had become one of the most fashionable parts of the town. 
Father Hublurds Tales in Middleton's Works (ed. Bullen) 8. 77: 
* The lawyer embraced our young gentleman and gave him many 
riotous instructions how to carry himself: told him he must 
acquaint himself with the gallants of the Inns of Court, ... his 
lodging must be about the Strand/ &c. 

38. China houses. These were places for exhibiting oriental 
goods which intercourse with China and Japan had lately brought 
to London. The wares, generally shown at first in private houses, 
were a matter of universal curiosity ; the resorts became notorious, 
and the word ' China-house ' came to signify a house of ill fame, 
a meaning which it kept until the eighteenth century. C. says 
they gradually changed their designation to that of India-shop, and 
that here were to be found teas, toys, ivories, shawls, India screens, 
cabinets, and various oriental cloths. From Dalrymples Memoirs, 
Appendix, vol. 2. 80, he draws the information that 'Motteux, 
the translator of Don Quixote, kept a famous one (India-shop) in 
Leadenhall Street, and Siam's in St. James' Street, was still better 
known. A very curious scene took place between King William 
and his wife on the occasion of her visiting some of these places,' 
Exchange. Of the New Exchange in the Strand, Wh.-C. 
says : ' A kind of Bazaar of the south side of the Strand, was 
so called in contradistinction to the Royal Exchange ; by James I 
it was named Britain's Burse. It was built on the site of the 
stables of Durham House, directly facing what is now Bedford 
Street, its frontage extending from George Court to Durham Street. 
. • . The first stone was laid June 10, 1608; . . . the building was 
opened Apr. 11, 1609 ... in the presence of James I and his 
queen. ... It was long before the New Exchange attained to any 
great degree of favour or trade. London was not then large 
enough for more than one structure of the kind.' Wh.-C. thinks 
that not until the Restoration did the Exchange in the Strand 
supplant the old one in the City, which was 'founded by Sir 



156 The Silent Woman [act i 

Thomas Gresham; the first stone was laid June 1566, and the 
building opened by Queen Elizabeth in person, Jan. 23, 1570-1.' 
The description of the shops, according to Howes, ed. 1631, 
p, 169, applies to either of the Exchanges: 'AH the shops were 
well furnished according to that time ; for then milliners or 
haberdashers in that place sold mouse-traps, bird-cages, shoeing- 
horns, lanthorns, and Jews' trumps, &c. There were also at that 
time that kept shops in the upper pawn of the Royal Exchange 
armourers that sold both old and new armour, apothecaries, 
booksellers, goldsmiths, and glass-sellers, although now (1631) 
it is as plenteously stored with all kinds of rich wares and fine 
commodities as any particular place in Europe, into which place 
many foreign princes daily send to be served of the best sort.' 
Dekker (1607) says of it: 'At euery turn a man is put in mind 
of Babel there is such a confusion of languages.' There is 
a History of Three Royal Exchanges by J. G. White, London, 
1896. 

Act I. Scene II 1 1. 

2. honested. This word is used as a verb by Sir Henry 
Wotton, and in the same sense of ' conferring honor on'. Also by 
Roger Ascham : ' Surely you should please God, benefit your 
country, and honest your own name.' — C. 

16. terrible boyes. N.E.D. under Boy 6, has: 'Riotous 
fellows of the time of Elizabeth and James 1? Nares, quoting 
from Wilson's Life of fames I \ 'A set of young bucks who 
delighted to commit outrages and get into quarrels, divers sects 
of vicious persons, going under the title of roaring boys, bravadoes, 
roysters, &c., commit many insolencies : the streets swarm, night 
and day, with bloody quarrels, private duels fomented, &c.' The 
same sort of disorderly fellows were called Mohawks in the 
eighteenth century,- they are described in the Spectator, and in 
The Mohawks, a novel by M. E. Braddon. 

22. what 's he. What is often used in the sense of ' of what 
kind or quality', where we should use who. Cf. Abbott, § 254 ; 
Epiccene 2. 3. 84 : ' What was that Syntagma, sir ? ' ' What is he ? ' 
2. 6. 51 ; also He7i. V 4. 3. 18, 2 Hen. IV 1. 2. 66. 

25. animal amphibium. Jonson indulges in this joke again, 
S. of News 2. I, p. 204 : 



sc. nil] Notes 157 

Mad. I did ask him if he were Amphibion Broker. 
Shun. Why? 

Mad. a creature of two natures 
Because he had two offices. 

Cf. note jw/ra, p. 193, under 'Epiccene'; i Zr^«./F3. 3. 139(1597): 

Host. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou ? 
Fal. What beast ! why, an otter. 
Prince. An otter. Sir John ! why an otter ? 
Fal. Why, she 's neither, fish nor flesh ; a man knows not where 
to have her. 

Selden, Table Talk, p. 69, echoes the same thing: 'The Priour of 
St. John of Jerusalem . . . was a kind of an Otter, a knight half- 
spiritual, and half-temporal.' 

40-1. our coate Yellow. This motley coat of arms is a re- 
miniscence of the garb worn by household fools in the days when 
they were part of aristocratic families. They were still to be seen 
in James's time, though they disappeared in the next generation. 
The coat of arms assigned to Sogliardo in Every Man Out 3. i, 
p. 91, resembles La-Foole's. 

44-5. antiquitie is not respected now. James I was subjected 
to unlimited criticism for the new aristocracy that filled his court, 
especially in regard to the lately knighted Scotch gentlemen. 
A slur cast upon them in Eastward Ho, a play written chiefly 
by Marston and Chapman, caused these two dramatists, together 
with Jonson, temporary imprisonment. Cf. Giff"ord's Memoir, 
Jonson's Works i. 71. 

45 fi". a brace of fat Does . . . phesants . . . godwits. Sir 
Epicure Mammon does not disdain to enumerate these among 
the delicacies, Alchem. 2. i, p. 55 : ' My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, 
calvered salmons, knots, godwits, lampreys.' Jonson, Epig. loi, 
Inviting a Friend to Supper, vol. 8. 204 : 

I'll tell you of more, and lie, so you will come : 
Of partridge, pheasant, woodcock, of which some 
May yet be there; and godwit if we can. 

Gervase Markham, English House-Wife, pp. loo-i (1683), describes 
as follows a humble feast ' for the entertainment of his true and 
worthy friend '. There should be, he advised, ' sixteen full dishes, 
that is, dishes of meat that are of substance, and not empty, or for 
shew — as thus, for example ; first, a shield of brawn with mustard ; 



158 The Silent Woman [act i 

secondly, a boy'Id capon ; thirdly, a boy' Id piece of beef; fourthly, 
a chine of beef rosted ; fifthly, a neat's tongue rosted ; sixthly, 
a pig rosted; seventhly, chewets bak'd; eighthly, a goose rosted* 
ninthly, a swan rosted ; tenthly, a turkey rosted ; the eleventh, 
a haunch of venison rosted ; the twelfth, a pasty of venison ; the 
thirteenth, a kid with a pudding in the belly ; the fourteenth, an 
olive pye ; the fifteenth, a couple of capons ; the sixteenth, a custard 
or dowsets. Now to these full dishes may be added sallet fricases, 
quelque choses, and devised paste, as many dishes more which 
make the full service no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as 
much as can conveniently stand on one table, and in one mess ; 
and after this manner you may proportion both your second and 
third course, holding fulness on one half of the dishes, and shew in 
the other, which will be both frugal in the splendor, contentment 
to the guest ; and much pleasure and delight to the beholder.' 

58. gentleman- vsher. A gentleman-usher was originally an 
officer of the court, but private persons made his employment 
a fashion, and the office degenerated into that of an upper unliveried 
servant, whose chief duty was to wait upon the ladies. Some of the 
characteristics naturally acquired by these men are excellent subjects 
for satire : e. g. Broker in S. 0/ News, and Ambler m D. A. 

58-9. knighted in Ireland. This is perhaps glancing again 
at the 'Plantation in Ulster' by English landlords in 1605. 

60. gold ierkin. La-Foole's gold-embroidered jerkin was 
probably his doublet, as Fairholt's assertion that the garments were 
identical seems borne out by such allusions as the following; 
Rowland, Knave of Hearts : 

Because we walk in jerkins 

Without an upper garment, cloak. 

We must be tapsters running up and down. 

Two G. 0/ V. 2. 4. 18 : 

Thurio. And how quote you my folly.? 
Val. I quote it in your jerkin. 
Thurio. My jerkin is a doublet. 

Appended to the lines from Two G. of V. Knight has this note : 
' The jerkin, or jacket, was generally worn over the doublet ; but 
occasionally the doublet was worn alone, and in many instances 
is confounded with the jerkin. Either had sleeves or not, as the 



sc. iiii] Notes 159 

wearer pleased.' The extravagance of these garments is often 
a subject of satire. Chatillon in King John 2. i. 69 describes the 
English youth as men who : 

Have sold their fortunes at their native homes, 
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs. 

61. Hand-voyage or at Caliz. Sir Francis Drake, as admiral 
of twenty-one ships, sailed to the West Indies in 1585, took St. Jago, 
St. Augustine, Cartagena, and St. Domingo. Upon Hispaniola's 
(St. Domingo's) largest town, St. Domingo, he levied a tribute of 
25,000 ducats. It was on his return voyage that he carried home 
from Roanoke Island the discouraged settlers sent out by Raleigh 
to found the first English colony in America. Lord Admiral 
Howard sailed with a fleet of 150 vessels against Cadiz, and the 
Earl of Essex commanded the land forces. On June 21 the 
Spanish ships defending the town were entirely defeated. Essex was 
the first to leap on shore, and the English troops took the city. 
Motley, Hisi. of the United Netherlands, vol. 3, ch. 32 : 'The king's 
navy was crippled, a great city was destroyed, and some millions 
of plunder had been obtained. But the permanent possession of 
Cadiz, which, in such case, Essex hoped to exchange for Calais, . . . 
would have been more profitable to England.' That the gallant 
adventurers in such expeditions as these were extravagantly dressed, 
and were in search of gold as well as honor, historical accounts 
of the voyages prove — e.g. Hakluyt; Purchas, Pilgrims; Fox 
Bourne, British Seamen under the Tudors. 

Concerning Jonson's spelling Caliz, it is significant to find that 
Dekker spells it so throughout The Rauens Almanacke, Pr. Wks. 
4. Cf. Introd. p. xvi. 

64. tooke their money. Contemporary satirists complained 
in like manner of land-owners who considered that the only item 
in their list of relations with tenants. Brathwait, English Gentleman 
(ed. 1633), p. 332: ' How blame-worthy then are these Court-comtis, 
whose onely delight is to admire themselves . . . Whither are these 
great ones gone } To the Court ; there to spend in boundlesse 
and immoderate riot, what their providant ancestors had so long 
preserved, and at whose doores so many needy soules have beene 
comfortably releeved.' Stubbes, Anat. of Ab., p. 116: ' Land lords 
make merchandise of their pore tenants, racking their rents, raising 



i6o The Silent Woman [act i, sc. iiii 

their fines & incommes, & setting them so straitely vpon the tenter 

hookes, as no man can lyve on them,' &c. 

65. eye o' the land. London is called by this epithet in Dekker's 

Kings Entertainment through the City of London, Dram. Works i : 
/ am the places Genius thence now springs 
A Vine, whose yongest Braunch shall produce Kings : 
This little world of men ; this precious Stone 
That sets out Europe ; this {the glasse alone^ 
Where the neate Sunne each morne himself attires. 
And glides it with his repercussive fires, 
This lewell of the Land; Englands right Eye; 
Altar of Loue ; and sphere of Males tie. 

Of Edinburgh Jonson says, 'The heart of Scotland, Britain's 
other eye '. Cf. Justin 5. 8 : ' Athenae, Graeciae oculus ' ; Cicero, 
de Nat. Deor. 3. 38; and Milton, P.R. 4. 240. 

69. in that commoditie. A cant word according to Dekker, 
Bellman of London, Pr. Wks. 5. 152. 

77. wind-fucker. The word thus printed in the early folios 
was changed to ' wind-sucker ' in H, and subsequent editions kept 
it. Halliwell has the word ' fuck-wind ' — ' a species of hawk ', but 
gives no references to prove its use ; N. E. D. and Century do not 
recognize the word. ' Wind-sucker ', on the other hand, seems 
common. C. gives an interesting use of the term by Chapman in 
his preface to the Iliad (ed. Hooper, vol. i, p. Ixxii), where he 
characterizes a detractor, perhaps Jonson himself : ' There is a 
certain envious wind- sucker that hovers up and down, laboriously 
engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and buzzing 
into every ear my detraction.' Cf. note 4. 4. 192. 

78. rooke. ' The names of various stupid birds have been used 
at different periods for " fool" or " dupe": gull (properly a " young 
bird" of any kind), pigeon, daw, dodo, dotterel, and rook.^ — W. and 
their Ways, p. 363. Poet. i. i, p. 378 : Ovid sen. ' Shall I have my 
son a stager now .''... a gull, a rook, a shop-clog, to make suppers 
and be laugh'd at .? ' 

Act II. Scene I. 

MN. Fellow makes legs. To make a leg is to make a bow 
(in allusion to the throwing back of one leg in performing the act), 
a common expression, often used jocularly, AlVs Well 2. 2. lo: 'He 
that cannot make a leg, put off's cap, kiss his hand, and say 



ACT II, sc. i] Notes i6i 

nothing, has neither leg, hands, life, nor cap/ Overbury, 
Characters, A Country Gentleman : * By this time he hath learned 
to kiss his hand, and make a leg both together.' Selden, Table 
Talk, under Thanksgiving, p. 109: 'We are just like a child; 
give him a Plum, he makes his Leg ; give him a second Plum, he 
makes another Leg : At last when his Belly is full, he forgets what 
he ought to do ; then his Nurse, or some body else that stands by 
him, puts him in mind of his Duty, Where 'syour Leg ? ' 

1. then. Conj. adv. 'then' used for 'than', cf. Abbott, § 70; 
and On the word than, in Philol. Soc. Transactions (1859, p. 151), 
by Danby P. Fry. 

1 2. with their daggers, or with bricke-bats. It was difficult 
to preserve order in London streets ; rioting, monstrous noises, 
thieving, even murder was not uncommon. Peace was sometimes 
restored by the cry of ' clubs ', and sometimes not. The best idea 
of the condition of London streets is found in Dekker's Bell- 
man of London, zxvA Lanthorne and Candle-light; Drake, Sh. and 
his Times, p. 425, quotes from Lodge, Illustrations 2. 206. 

Of Morose's annoyers, it would be the ' gentlemen ' who would 
carry the daggers, for every gentleman wore rapier and dagger. 
The brickbats would be the missiles of the lower sort of roarer. 
Coriol. I. I. 168, Menenius advises the mob thus: 

But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs : 
Rome and her rats are at the point of battle. 

20. Your Italian, and Spaniard. Jonson is fond of using 
this colloquial _>w^r, especially when the speaker is in a self-satisfied 
or patronizing mood. Bobadil vaingloriously describes how, Every 
Man /« 4. 5, p. 115: 'I would teach these nineteen the special 
rules, as your punto, your reverso, your stoccata, your imbroccato, 
your passada, your montanto.' So Lepidus, drunk, Ant. and Cleop. 
2. 7.29: ' Your serpent of Egypt is bred, now, of your mud by the 
operation of your sun: so in your crocodile.' Hamlet 4. 3. 24: 
' Your worm is your only emperor for diet ; . . . your fat king and 
your lean beggar is but variable service.' Cf. Coriol. i, i. 132, the 
talk of Menenius with the mob. 

Morose is at the height of his self-complacency here, taking his 
audience into his confidence as could hardly be expected of one to 
whom silence was so precious, but exemplifying that quality of 



i62 The Silent Woman [act ii 

dramatic irony which Jonson is so successful in making use of, 
allowing enthusiasm simply to make it ridiculous. 



Act II. Scene II. 

3. fishes! Pythagorians. The Pythagoreans, followers of 
Pythagoras of the sixth century a. d., kept their theories, beliefs, 
and observances a profound secret. Jonson's News from the New 
World, vol. 7. 342 (2 Her. loq.) : 'They are Pythagoreans, all 
dumb as fishes, for they have no controversies to exercise them- 
selves in.' Poel. 4. I, p. 449 : 

Gall. O, that Horace had staid still, here. 
Tib. So would not I : for both these would have turned Pytha- 
goreans, then. 

Gall. What, mute ? 
Tib. I, as fishes i' faith. 

4. Harpocrates ... with his club. Harpocrates (Horus) was 
the Egyptian god of the sun, the son of Osiris. He was said to 
have been born with his finger on his mouth, indicative of secrecy 
and mystery. — Smith's Classical Diet. GifFord suggests that Jon- 
son confounded the cornucopia, which the god is usually pictured 
as carrying, with the club, which is an indispensable attribute of 
Aesculapius, but it is more probable, as Dr. A. S. Cook points out, 
that Jonson identifies Harpocrates with Herakles. Cf. Lafaye, 
Histoire du Culte des Divinites d' Alexandrie (Bibltotheque des Ecoles 

/rangaises d'Athenes et de Rome, fascicule 33), p. 260: [Resembles 
Eros, Dionysus, Apollo, &c.] ' Identifi^ avec Hercule, il s'appuie 
quelquefois sur la massue. II semble qu'on se soit ingeni^ a grouper 
autour de lui tous les attributs qui convenaient dans les traditions 
artistiques de la Gr^ce aux figures des dieux enfants.' Cf. p. 283, 
no. 67. Eratosthenes, quoted by Georgius Syncellus, p. 109 B, 
ed. Goar, identifies Harpocrates with Herakles. Cf. SeJ. 5. 7, 
p. 129, and Bar. Fair 5. 3, p. 505. 

9. an impudence. Jonson treats abstract nouns as concrete 
by prefixing an article or other modifier as here ; ' another feare ', 
4. 5. 205 ; ' a miserie ', 5. 3. 60 ; or by pluralizing, as their ' wits ', 
'braveries', 'valours', 4. 6. 5, 6 ; 'those servitudes', 5. 3. 112; 
'ladies honors', 'your fames', 5. 4. 243, 248. 

14. taste the one halfe of my dagger. The meaning is like 



sc. ii] Notes 163 

that attached to the common expression to eat a sword. Cf. Much 
Ado 4. I. 279 : 

Benedict. By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me. 

Beat. Do not swear and eat it. 

Bened. ... I will make him eat it that says I love not you. 

2 Hen. VI 4. 10. 30 : Cade. ' I'll make thee eat iron like an 
ostrich, and swallow my sword like a great pin.' 

1 7. they say, you are to marry. The relation to the follow- 
ing scene of Juvenal's Sixth Satire has been made clear in the 
Introd. Similar in subject and details of treatment is Dekker's 
popular satire against women, The Batchelars Banquet (1604), 
a much lengthier and more detailed satire; it is a prose treatise 
exemplified with copious contemporary illustrations, but making 
use of Juvenal also. 

22. London-bridge, at a low fall. The old bridge built by 
Peter Colechurch 11 76-1 209 was still standing in Jonson's day, 
indeed, was not rebuilt until the nineteenth century. It was 
covered with shops on both sides, making of the long structure 
a continuous street. St. Thomas's chapel was on the centre pier on 
the east side. There was a draw-bridge eleven spans from the 
Southwark side, and here were exhibited the heads of people 
executed for treason. Stow describes it in the Survey i. 53 ff. 
Walimsley, Bridges over the Thames : ' The resistance caused to 
the free ebb and flow of a large body of water by the contraction 
of its channel produces a fall or rapid under the bridge.' The 
Thames was noted for this dangerous condition of the water as it 
swirled through the narrow old arches. It was called 'shooting 
the bridge ' to pass the rapids in a boat. 

24. Bow. St. Mary le Bow, Stow 3. 20, describes as being 
built ' in the reign of William Conqueror, being the first in this 
City built on arches of stone, was therefore called St. Mary de 
Arqubus or le Bow in West Cheaping; . . . This church ... for 
divers accidents happening there, hath been made more famous 
than any other parish church of the whole city or suburbs.' Bow 
church is on the south side of Cheapside, in Cordwainer's Ward ; 
it was destroyed in the great fire of 1666, but the outline of the 
original ' delicate steeple ', ' is preserved on a silver seal bearing the 
date of 1580, which was discovered after the fire. It was square, 
with a pinnacle at each of the four angles, from which spring flying 



164 The Silent Woman [act ii 

buttresses, supporting a fifth pinnacle in the centre.' — Wh.-C. 
This old church, with its bells and its dragon, is alluded to 
innumerable times in literature, e. g. Otway, The Soldier's Fortune 
(1681): 'Oh Lord! here are doings, here are vagaries! I'll run 
mad. I'll climb Bow Steeple presently, bestride the dragon, 
and preach cuckoldom to the whole city.' Nor was suicide 
from London steeples, such as True-wit suggests, unheard of. 
By Cooper, Ath. Cant., vol. 2. 164, Bacon is reported to have said 
to Queen Elizabeth : ' If I do break my neck, I shall do it 
in a manner as Mr. Dodington did it, which walked on the 
batdements of the church many days, and took a view and survey 
where he should fall.' This brother-in-law of Sir Francis Wal- 
singham committed suicide Apr. ii, 1600, from the steeple of 
St. Sepulchre's. 

25. Pauls. The St. Paul's cathedral of Jonson's time, built in 
1087 by Bishop Maurice and remodeled in the thirteenth century, 
was so badly burned in 1561 that the tower and roof were lost. 
The steeple was never replaced. In 1598 Stow writes : ' Concerning 
the steeple divers models were devised and made, but little was 
done, through whose default God knoweth.' In 1632 Lupton, 
London Carbonadoed, says : ' The head of St. Paul's hath been 
twice troubled with a burning fever, and so the city, to keep it 
from a third danger, lets it stand without a head.' The entire 
church was lost in the fire of 1666. Cf. Underwoods, 61, Execration 
upon Vulcan, vol. 8. 408 : 

Pox on your flameship, Vulcan ! if it be 

To all as fatal as't hath been to me. 

And to Paul's Steeple ; . . . and though a divine 

Loss, remains yet as unrepaired as mine. 

For an interesting account of St. Paul's and the unique use to 
which the church was put at this time, cf. Dekker, The Dead 
Tearme; for its history. Three Cathedrals dedicated to St. Paul 
in London, William Longman, L. 1873. 

34-5. masques, plaies, puritane preachings, mad-folkes. 
The first was a form of histrionic spectacle much in vogue during 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It originated in the practice 
of introducing, on festival days, men wearing masks to represent 
mythical or allegorical characters. From a mere acted pageant it 



sc. ii] Notes 165 

gradually developed into a complete dramatic entertainment, in 
which the scenes were accompanied and embellished by music, the 
dressing was very splendid, and the scenery magnificent. Ben 
Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Milton are the greatest makers of 
this form of poetry. Because of the expense of such spectacles 
they were never a popular amusement, being enjoyed chiefly by 
the royalty or nobility of the realm, at one of the great houses. 
Masques came to be a feature of ceremonial days, birthdays, 
weddings, coronation days, &c. True-wit enumerates masques as 
one of the things Morose's wife should not witness, because the 
conduct of the citizens who were admitted to the court masques, 
was notorious. playes. The harshest criticism in regard to 
the conduct of women in the early play-house is that of Stubbes, 
Anat. 0/ Ab., pp. 144 ff., and of Gosson, School 0/ Ab. Besant, 
London, p. 279, gives a happier view : ' Women in the galleries . . . 
dressed very finely, like ladies of quality, in satin gown, lawn aprons, 
taffeta petticoats, and gold threads in their hair. They seemed 
to rejoice in being thus observed and gazed upon. When a young 
man had found a girl to his taste, he went into the gallery, sat 
beside her, and treated her to pippins, nuts, or wine.' 

But from the earliest times the audience at the theatre had a 
reputation for irresponsible behavior. As early as Dec. 6, 1574, 
the following enactment was passed by ' Order of the Common 
Council of London in restraint of Dramatic Exhibitions ' (Hazlitt, 
Drama and the Stage, p. 27): 'Whereas heartofore sondrye greate 
disorders and inconvenyences have been found to ensewe to this 
Cittie by the inordynate hauntynge of greate multitudes of people, 
specially youthe, to playes, enterludes and shewes ; namelye 
occasyon of frayes and quarrells, eavell practizes of incontinencye 
in greate Innes, havinge chambers and secrete places adjoynynge 
to their open stagies and galleries, inveyglynge and alleurynge of 
maides, speciallye orphanes, and good cityzens children under age, 
to previe and unmete contracts, the publishinge of unchaste, un- 
comelye, and unshamefaste speeches and doyngs, withdrawinge of 
the Queues Majesties subjectes from dyvyne service on Soundaies 
& hollydayes,' &c. puritane preachings. Jonson's gibe at the 
Puritan service by classing it with secular gatherings of the above 
sort is hardly fair, but it indicates his intolerance of this sect, 
which resulted in the making of the famous Tribulation Wholesome 



i66 The Silent Woman [act ir 

and Ananias in the Alchem., and in the still more famous character 
in Bar. Fair, the erstwhile baker of Banbury, Zeal-of-the-land 
Busy, together with his friends the Littlewits and Purecrafts. 
mad-folkes. The hospitals for the insane were open for the 
amusement of visitors, for the Jacobian idea of the comic included 
madness, as many of the plots and separate scenes of old comedies 
prove. A small fee admitted visitors to the public asylums, and 
the inmates were looked upon in the light of legitimate amusement. 
strange sights. Fleet Street, from Ludgate Circus to the 
Strand and West End, was London's ' midway ' or * pike ', where 
people of all sorts crowded to see the curiosities brought home by 
English explorers : Indians from the Americas, fish from strange 
seas, waxworks, puppet shows, and monstrosities of all kinds. 
Thornbury, Sh. Eng. i. 35: 'There's the guinea hens and casso- 
wary at St. James's and the beaver in the park ; the giant's lance 
at the Tower; the live dog-fish; the wolf, and Harry the Lion; 
the elephant ; the steer with two tails ; the camel ; the motion of 
Eltham and the giant Dutchman.' Another list is in Mayne, City 
Match 3. I : 

The birds 
Brought from Peru, the hairy wench, the camel, 
The elephant, dromedaries, or Windsor Castle, 
The Woman with dead flesh, or she that washes, 
Threads needles, writes, dresses her children, plays 
O' th' virginals with her feet, could never draw 
People like this. 

In the Tempest 2. 2 Trinculo, seeing Caliban, exclaims: 'A strange 
fish ! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this 
fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of 
silver ; there would this monster make a man ; any strange beast 
there makes a man : when they will not give a doit to relieve 
a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.' In 
Volp. 2. I Jonson satirizes the love of strange sights and news, in 
the gull Sir Politik Would-be. 

37. Etheldred . . . Edward the Confessor. Jonson's refer- 
ence to the morals of Edward's and his father's time, is influenced 
by the latter's churchly name, his reputation for sanctity, and his 
canonization in 1161. He was a West Saxon king, son of ^thel- 
red II and Emma of Normandy. He was born at Islip, Oxford- 



sc. ii] Notes 167 

shire, and lived 1 004-1 066. ^thelred II, surnamed the Unready, 
lived 968-1016, 

42. shall runne. Shall at this time denoted in all three persons 
inevitable futurity, without desire. Later a reluctance to apply a word 
meaning necessity to and and 3rd person, caused post-Elizabethans 
to substitute will (wish) in the 2nd and 3rd persons. So will 
came to have two duties — purpose (wish), futurity. Shall in the 
2nd and 3rd persons came to mean the compulsory act of the 
speaker. Cf. Abbott, § 315. 

43. cosen'd. This word as verb or noun is constantly crop- 
ping up, and at this time, more often than not, its connotation is 
unpleasant. W. and their Ways, pp. 67 ff. : ' Cozen has usually been 
referred to cousin, and the French cousiner favors this view. Cot- 
grave, in 161 1, defined the French verb as 'to claim kindred for 
advantage . . . ; as he who, to save charges in travelling, goes 
from house to house, as cousin to the owner of every one '. 
This etymology has been doubted, but it is supported by a fact 
which has escaped the editors of the N. E. D. ' To go a- 
cousining' is an old-fashioned New England phrase applied to 
one who quarters himself on his distant relatives.' Cf. Epicoem 
2. 2. 103. 

49. assassinate. An unusual noun, Daniel, Civ. Wars 3. 78 : 

What hast thou done. 
To make this barbarous base assassinate 
Upon the person of a prince? 

Jonson, Prince Henry s Barriers, vol. 7. 157 : 

Th' assassinate made upon his life 
By a foul wretch. 

54. facinorous. Shakespeare makes use of this word but once, 
AlVs Well 2. 3. 35, Parolles: 'He's of a most facinerious spirit 
that will not acknowledge it.' 

61 ff. Vaulter . . . Frencliman that walkes vpon ropes. 
Acrobats never lacked popularity. Nichols {Progresses i. 16) 
enumerates among the entertainments at Kenilworth Castle for 
Queen Elizabeth, 'goings, turnings, gambauds, somersaults, 
caprettings, and flights, forward, backward, sideways, downward, 
upward, and with sundry windings, gyrings, and circumflexions '. 
That this class of entertainers did not have the sanction of the 
law is shown in the following, 39 Eliz. c. 4 (1597-8), ' An Acte for 



i68 The Silent Woman [act ii 

punyshment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars': 'All 
Fencers, Bearewards, common Players of Enterludes, and Min- 
strels wandering abroad (other then Players of Enterludes belong- 
ing to any Baron of the Realm . . .) shall be stripped, whipped, and 
sent to their own parishes or to the house of correction.' Strutt 
gives a full account of most of their performances, Sports and 
Past., pp. 172 fF. Vaulters are described : ' The wonderful perform- 
ances of that most celebrated master Simpson, the famous vaulter 
who, being lately arrived from Italy, will show the world what 
vaulting is,' &c. One leaped on horseback from all sorts of incon- 
ceivable positions, another leaped over nine horses standing side 
by side with a man seated on the midmost, another jumped over 
a garter held fourteen feet high, &c. Strutt relates remarkable 
feats in rope- dancing (ibid. 180 ff.) from the battlements of St. Paul's, 
in the time of Henry, Mary, and James II. Wire-dancing Strutt 
tells about on p. 228, and descriptions of the balancing of balls, 
knives, swords, wheels, &c., follow on p. 231. 

68. yellow doublets, and great roses. The ' braveries ' of 
James I's day werfe notorious for the loud colors in which they 
dressed and for the extremes to which they carried fashions. 
The rose, which was worn on the shoe, was as universal a fashion 
as it was a subject for jest and satire. 2?. .4. i. 2, p. 19 : 

My heart was at my mouth 
Till I had view'd his shoes well; for these roses 
Were big enough to hide a cloven foot. 

Hamlet 3. 2, 288: 'Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, 
with two Provencial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship 
in a cry of players, sir ?' Friar Bacons Prophecie (1604) : 

When roses in the garden grew. 
And not in ribons on a shoe : 
Now ribon-roses take such place, 
That garden roses want their grace. 

69-70. if foule, . . . shee'll . . . buy those doublets. So said 
Chaucer, Wifes Prologue 265: 'And if that she be foul thou 
seist, that she coveiteth every man that she may se.' And Jonson 
echoes the satire again, Cat. 2. i, in the conversation between 
Fulvia and Sempronia. 

73. Tyrannes. Pronounced probably Tyranny, cf. 3. 5. 17. 
Though in a line in Sej. i. i, p. 17: 'Tyrannes arts are to give 



sc. ii] Notes 169 

flatterers grace', it is disyllabic. C. appends to the line in SeJ. 
this statement : ' Jonson invariably spelt this word without a / ', 
meaning of course a final /. Cf. note 3. 2. 10. 

78-9. Speake Latine and Greeke. Despite Jonson's satire, 
women who were his contemporaries were no mean students of these 
languages. Women of the type of the mother and aunts of Francis 
Bacon are by no means such isolated cases that parallels are not 
to be found. Roger Ascham, as tutor of Elizabeth and Lady Jane 
Grey, told before Jonson's time the now popular story of going 
to bid the latter of his pupils good-bye before he left for Germany, 
and she was ' in her chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greeke, 
and that with as much delight as some gentlemen would read 
a merrie tale in Bocase '. Elizabeth herself wrote a commentary 
on Plato, translated two orations from the Greek Isocrates, a play 
of Euripides, the Hiero of Xenophon, and Plutarch's de Curiontate, 
and her translations from the Latin are numerous. Cf. Ascham's 
Works (ed. Benner), p. 333. 

81. silenc'd brethren. Alchem. 3. i, p. 88, Tribulation calls 
them * silenced saints' ; Dekker, ' dumb ministers ', cf. note 3. 3. 
84 ; Jonson calls them ' silenc'd ministers ', 2. 6. 17, as doesEarle, 
Micro-C, p. 63. In the Conventicle Act of Elizabeth, 1593, the 
Puritans had been prohibited from worshipping independently. 
Those disobeying this mandate were imprisoned, some for terms 
stretching over many years without even a trial. In 1604, after the 
Hampton Court conference, nonconformists were again silenced, 
and many ministers lost their benefices. 

82. family, or wood. Alchan. 3. 2, p. 92, has this peculiar 
expression. 

86. will cozen you. Jonson brings the same charge of dis- 
honesty against the Puritans in Bar. Fair 5. 2, p. 476, where 
Purecraft confesses to Quarlous her enormities, among which she 
enumerates her business of marrying ' our poor handsome young 
virgins with our wealthy bachelors or widowers; to make them 
steal from their husbands '. 

90. I will beat you. Manual correction of household servants 
was common. Twelfth Night 3. 2 : 'I know my lady will strike 
him.' There are many stories of Elizabeth's chastisement of those 
who waited upon her. Besides, there seems to have been a preva- 
lent custom of indulging in the kind of conjugal beatings which 

M 



170 The Silent Woman [act ll 

Mrs. Otter knew how to administer, and examples of which 
abound in Dekker's prose writings. 

103. cosen. As illustrative of the connotation given to this 
word, 2 Honest Whore i. 2, Fustigo, who pretends to be his 
sister's lover, says to Viola : ' No, no, it shall be cousin, or rather 
coz ; that 's the gulling word between the citizens' wives and their 
mad-caps ... no, no, let me alone to cousin you rarely.' 

108 ff. a succession of groomes, footmen, vshers, and 
other messengers. The footman was originally chosen from the 
Irish, and worked in the stables. Overbury paints him : ' Guards 
he wears none, which makes him live more upright than any cross- 
gartered gentleman-usher.' The groomes were servants of various 
offices and various degrees of importance. Cf. D. A. 4. i, p. 108: 

Lady T. Good madam, whom do they use in messages ? 
Wit. They commonly use their slaves, madam. 
Lady T. And does your ladyship think that so good, madam ? 
Wit. No indeed, madam ; I therin prefer the fashion of Eng- 
land far, of your young delicate page, or discreet usher. 

109 ff. embroyderers, iewellers, tyre-women, sempsters, 
fether-men, perfumers. The wares of embroiderers and 
jewelers were never more in requisition than in the days of Eliza- 
beth and James : caps, ruffs, bands, doublets, jerkins, hose, 
smocks, gloves, every garment was a miracle of design and 
stitches painfully wrought. Stubbes, Anai. of Ab., pp. 51 ff., takes 
article by article for his attack. Burton, A^iat. of Mel., p. 525 : 
' Why do they decorate themselves with artificial flowers, the 
various colours of herbs, needle works of exquisite skill, quaint 
devises, and perfume their persons, wear inestimable riches in 
precious stones, crown themselves with gold and silver, use coronets 
and tires of several fashions, deck themselves with pendants, brace- 
lets, ear-rings, chains, girdles, rings, pins, spangles, embroideries, 
shadow rebatoes, versicolor ribands? Why do they make such 
glorious shews with their scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, furs, laces, 
tiffonies, ruffs, falls, calls, cuffs, damasks, velvets, tinsels, cloth of 
gold, silver tissue?' 

A description of the Duke of Buckingham is illuminating on 
this point, Planche 2. 229: 'It was common with him at any 
ordinary dancing to have his clothes trimmed with great diamond 
buttons, and to have diamond hatbands, cockades, and ear-rings ; 



sc. ii] Notes 171 

to be yoked with great and manifold knots of pearl ; in short to 
be manacled, fettered, and imprisoned in jewels; insomuch that 
at his going over to Paris in 1625, he had 27 suits of clothes 
made the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, gold, and gems 
could contribute ; one of which was a white uncut velvet, set all 
over, both suit and cloak, with diamonds valued at 14,000 pounds, 
besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also 
his sword, girdle, hatband, and spurs.' 

The sempsters, male and female, had their shops in the 
Royal Exchange, and in the New Exchange in the Strand. 
The fether-men had their head-quarters in Pilgrim Street, and 
were, most of them, the Puritan inhabitants of Blackfriars, thus 
giving the satirists an excellent opportunity to point out incon- 
sistencies of religion and business. Randolph, Muses' Looking- 
Glass (1638) I. I : 

Mrs. Flowerden. Indeed it sometimes pricks my conscience, 
I come to sell 'em pins and looking-glasses. 

Bird. I have their custom too for all their feathers : 
'Tis fit that we, which are sincere professors, 
Should gain by infidals. 

ibid. 1.2: 

You sweet Feathermen, whose ware though light. 
Outweighs your conscience. 

Bar. Fair 5. 3, p. 502 : * What say you to your feather-makers 
in the Friers that are of your faction of faith ? Are not they with 
their perukes, and their puffs, their fans, and their huffs as much 
pages of Pride, and waiters upon Vanity/ Alchem. i. i, 
p. 20: 

An upstart apocryphal captain 

Whom not a Puritan in Blackfriers will trust 

So much as for a feather! 

Marston, Malcontent, Induction : 

BuRBAGE. Why do you conceal your feather, sir ? 

Sly. Why do you think I'll have jests broken upon me in the 
play ; This play hath beaten all our gallants out of the feathers ; 
Blackfriars hath almost spoilt Blackfriars for feathers. 

Middleton, Roaring Girl (^1611) 2. i : 

What feather is't you'd have, sir? 

These are most worn, and most in fashion 

M Z 



172 The Silent Wommt [act ii 

Amongst the beaver gallants, the stone riders, 

The private-stage's audience, the twelve-penny stool gentlemen. 

I can inform you 'tis the general feather. 

Cf. Anat. of Ah., p. 50; also note i. i. 64. 

112. mercer. These rich and fashionable tradesmen, together 
with the haberdashers, had fine shops on London Bridge. Because 
of their high prices Greene in Qidppe for an Vpstart Cojirtier, 
p. 279, coins the epithet 'merciless mercer'. 

115. despaire of a beard. An un-EngUsh phrase explained by 
its source, Juv. SaL 6. 367 : * Oscula delectent et desperatio barbae.' 

116. Salisbury. In reference to the horse-racing there. 

117. Bath. This Somersetshire town, with its famous hot- 
springs, was an old Roman bathing-place, but was destroyed by 
the Saxons. In the seventeenth century it was developed and 
took the lead among English watering-places. In the eighteenth 
century it added to its attractions Beau Nash and the Pump Room 
in the Abbey Churchyard. what at court, what in progresse. 
The court, generally at Whitehall, was a notorious news centre. 
Elizabeth's progresses were matters of state policy, and were 
continued from her accession to her death. In the year of her 
coronation, 1559, she went from Greenwich to Dartmouth, Cob- 
ham, Eltham, Nonesuch, and Hampshire; in 1560 to Winchester 
and Basing, and so on through almost every year of her reign. 
Her famous visit to Kenilworth was July 9, 1575 ; in Aug. 1564 
she visited Cambridge and stayed at King's College; in 1566 
she went to Oxford. James during his reign followed the example 
of his predecessor. Nichols, in his exhaustive treatment of this 
subject in his Progresses and Public Processions of Queeii Elizabeth, 
and fames /, may be referred to for descriptions of the method of 
travel, the entertainment, and the size of the court that accompanied 
the monarch. 

118. censure poets. Jonson says in Disc. (SchelHng), pp. 21.16 
ff. : ' Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more preposterous than 
the running judgments upon poetry and poets.' But it is not 
strange that an age so full of the creative spirit in literature 
should have shown a proportionately widespread critical spirit. 
Dekker calls the women with a literary craze ' the Arcadian and 
Euphuized gentlewomen '. 

119. Daniel . . . Spenser . . . lonson. Samuel Daniel 



sc. ii] Notes 173 

( 1 562-1 61 9), poet and historian, was the author of the poetical 
Books of the Civil Wars, 1 595-1 604, Mtisophilus, 1599, &c. ; 
and the prose History of England. William Browne called him 
' The well-languaged Daniel '. He was poet-laureate for years 
before Jonson succeeded him, and when the Queen's Revels' Boys 
were reorganized after James's accession Daniel was made their 
literary manager, Jonson seems to have had no great respect for 
his poetic merit. In Every Man In 5. i, p. 146 he parodies the 
first stanza of Daniel's Sonnets to Delia, and in the S. of News 
3. I, p. 236, he sneers at the 'fine poet'. Besides, he is 'the 
better verser' in the following quotation from Epistle 12, To 
Elizabeth Coimtess of Rutland, where he promises to do the 
countess honor as only poets can : 

You, and that other star, that purest light. 
Of all Lucina's train, Lucy the bright, . . . 
Who though she hath a better verser got 
Or poet, in the court account, than I 
And who doth me, though I not him envy, 

{Forest, vol. 8. 269.) 

Drummond quotes several remarks about him in the Cojiversations, 
vol. 9. 365-6 ; I. * Said he had written a Discourse of Poesie both 
against Campion and Daniel, especially this last.' III. 'Samuel 
Daniel was a good honest man, had no children ; but no poet.' 
XL 'Daniel was at jealousies with him.' For a full treatment 
of Jonson's relation to Daniel, cf. Small, The Stage Quarrel. 
Spenser. Edmund Spenser was admired by Jonson despite 
Drummond's report, vol. 9, 366 : ' Spenser's stanzas pleased him 
not, nor his matter ; the meaning of which allegoric he had de- 
livered in papers to Sir Walter Raleigh.' In Disc. (Sch.), p. 22. 14, 
Jonson writes : ' If it were put to the question of the water rhymer's 
works, against Spenser's, I doubt not but they would find more 
suffrages.' Underwoods 96, Sir Kenelm Digby, vol. 9. 35 : ' doth 
love my verses, and will look upon them, next to Spenser's noble 
book '. W. quotes the following to prove that Jonson's supposition 
that Spenser and Daniel might be compared was in truth a 
reality. 

Spenserum si quis nostrum velit esse Maronem, 

Tu, Daniele, niihi Naso Britannus eris; 
Sin ilium potius Phoebum velit esse Britannum, 

Tum, Daniele, mihi tu IMaro noster eris. 



174 '^^^ Silent Woman [act ii 

Nil Phoebo ulterius; si quid foret, illud haberet 

Spenserus, Phoebus tu, Daniele, fores. 
Quippe loqui Phoebus cuperet si more Britanno, 

Haud scio quo poterat, ni velit ore tuo. 

Fitz. Geoffrey (Oxon. 8vo. i6oi). 

Jonson. Jonson's habit of introducing himself, as here, into 
his writings was due to his intensely personal attitude toward any 
matter that held his interest, but it is scarcely justifiable from the 
standpoint of ethics or dramatic art. In Cyn. Rev. he is Crites ; 
in Poet., Horace. In Mag. Lady 4. i, p. 15 : 

Iron. Who made this epigram, you ? 
Com. No, a great clerk 

As any of his bulk, Ben Jonson made it. 

ibid. 3. 4, p. 66 : 

Sir Diaph. O, you have read the play there, the Neiv Inn, 
Of Jonson's, that decries all other valour, 
But what is for the public. 

News /ro7n the New World, vol. 7. 341: 'One of our greatest 
poets (I know not how good a one) went to Edinburgh on foot, 
and came back,' a reminiscence of the visit to Scotland and to 
his friend Drummond of Hawthornden. Gipsies Mefajnor., vol. 7. 
405 : ' Good Ben slept there, or else forgot to shew it.' Epig. 43, 
To Robert Earl 0/ Salisbury, vol. 8.166: ' not the worst' of poets. 
Epig. Im'go Jojies, vol. 8. 13 : 

Sir Inigo doth fear it as I hear . . . 

That I should write upon him some sharp verse. 

The Lybian lion hunts no butterflies. 

Cf. also Underwoods 87, 96, in vol. 9. 

the tother youth. It is doubtful to whom Jonson refers, 
if to anybody. Malone named Shakespeare, a suggestion crushed 
by Gifford in a long note, and replaced by the name of Marston 
because of his nearness to Jonson's age, his publications, his 
learning, austerity, &c. 

126. going in disguise. It was an easy matter for women 
to go about incognito in an age when masks were fashionable, 
and ladies drove in their coaches, sat at the play, and danced at 
court protected by velvet visors. Bar. Fair 5. 3, p. 486 : 

Mrs. Lit. (disguised) I think they think me a very lady. 

Edg. What else, madam ? 

Mrs. Lit. Must I put off my mask to him ? 



sc. n] Notes 175 

Underwoods 14, To Mr. John Fletcher, vol. 8. 324 : 

The wise and many-headed bench, that sits 
Upon the life and death of plays and wits, 
Composed of gamester, captain, knight, knight's man, 
Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan. 

Stubbes abuses the fashion, p. 80 : * When they vse to ride abroad, 
they haue visors made of veluet (or in my iudgement they may 
rather be called inuisories) wherewith they couer all their faces, 
hauing holes made in them agaynst their eies, whereout they looke. 
So that if a man who knew not their guise before, should chance 
to meete one of them, he would thinke he mette a monster or 
a deuill ; for face he can see none, but two broad holes agaynst 
their eyes, with glasses in them.' 

127. coniurer . . . cunning woman. The conjurer was 
much resorted to, and in his tricks, described by Thornbury, 
Sh. Eng. 2. 156 ff., and Brand, Pop. Antiq. 3. 55 ff,, reminds us of 
quack spiritualists of to-day. He materialized spirits of the dead, 
consulted knowing spirits to discover future happenings, pretended 
to become invisible, &c. Minsheu in his Did. differentiates the 
conjurer from the witch : ' The conjuror seemeth by praiers and 
invocations of God's powerful names, to compel the divell to say 
or doe what he commandeth him. The witch dealeth rather by 
a friendly and voluntarie conference ... to have his or her turn 
served, in lieu or stead of blood or other gift offered unto him, 
especially of his or her soule. And both these differ from in- 
chanters or sorcerers, because the former two have personal 
conference with the divell, and the other meddles but with medicines 
and ceremonial formes of words called charms.' Prospero in 
The Tevipest is a poetic type of conjurer. cunning women 
were quack doctors; they could also read future happenings, 
prophesy by the stars, mix love potions, perform conjurer's tricks, 
&c. Thornbury describes them, Sh. Eng. 2. i68 ff. In the 
M. W. of W. 4. 2, the Old Woman of Brentford is ' a witch, 
a quean, an old cozening quean I . . . We are simple men ; we do 
not know what 's brought to pass under the profession of fortune- 
telling. She works by charms, by spells, by the figure, and 
such daubery as this is ; beyond our element : we know nothing.' 
In regard to the whole wide field of superstitious beliefs at this 
time, reference may be made to Thomas Lodge (1596), Devils 
Incarnate of this Age; Reginald Scot {\e^^4), Discoverie of Witch- 



176 The Silent IVoman [act ii 

era//; James I (1597), Daeinonology, James Mason (161 2), 
Anatomie of Sorcery; R. Bernard (1637), A Guide to Grand- 
juryme7i, in two books, conccrnuig ivitchcraft and witches. 

1 39. birdlime. Remarks on Epicccne, p. 7 1 : ' Viscous and 
glutinous unguents and cataplasms for beautifying the face.' Cf. 
Gipsies Mctamor., vol. 7. 402. 

140. fucus. This now obs. word was very common; Cyn. 
Rev. 5. 2, p. 328: 'What are the ingredients to your fucus?' 
Dekker, Westward Ho 1. 1, Dram. Wks. 2. 285 : ' Heereis ... an 
excellent Fucus to . . . weede out Freckles.' Ram Alley, Haz.- 
Dods., vol. 10 : 

Till you referred me to the aunt, the lady, 
I knew no ivory teeth, no caps of hair, 
No mercury water, fucus, or perfumes. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, Woman Hater 3. 2 : 

With all his waters, powders, fucuses. 
To make thy lovely corps sophisticate. 

141. forgot. Elizabethan English is full of such irregular 
participles. Cf. Epiccene quit i. i. 161, I'id 2. 4. 103, catcKd 
3. 2. 43, broke 2. 4. 7, writ 5. 4. 204. Cf. Abbott, §§ 343, 344- 



Act II. Scene III. 

1. at her owne charges: i.e. risking the disadvantages her- 
self. Cat., Address to the Reader, vol. 4. 186 : 'Be any thing you 
will be at your own charge.' 

23. recite his owne workes. This is the jest eternal against 
amateur writers in French and English comedy. Dekker, Guls 
Hor7i-Booke gives careful directions how to get an audience in an 
ordinary : ' After a turne or two in the roome, take occasion 
(pulling out your gloues) to haue some Epigrajns, or Satyre, or 
Sonnet fastened in one of them that may (as it were vnwittingly to 
you) offer itselfe to the Gentlemen : they without much coniuration 
from them, and a pretty kind of counterfet loathnes in yourselfe, do 
now read it ; and though it be none of your owne, sweare you 
made it.' Exactly the same advice is in the French Lois de la 
galanterie, 1658. 

45. Plvtarch, and Seneca. From the coupling of Seneca's 
name with the moralist's, it would seem that Jonson did not 



sc. Ill] Notes 177 

identify him with the writer of tragedies, as most scholars now do. 
Jonson carefully designates the tragedian, 1. 68. 

49. Essaists. Discitdi. Schelling), p. 25. 21, criticizes the incon- 
sistencies and shallowness of essayists, 'even their master Mon- 
taigne '. 

57. Aristotle. Z^/jc, p. 78. 21 : ' Aristotle was the first accurate 
critic and truest judge, nay, the greatest philosopher the world 
ever had'; ibid., p. 80. 6: 'But whatever nature at any time 
dedicated to the most happy, or long exercise to the most laborious, 
that the wisdom and learning of Aristotle brought into an art 
because he understood the causes of things'; ibid. p. 66, 16: 
' Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator, 
as the schools have done Aristotle.' In the Execration tipon 
Vulcan, vol. 8. 403, Jonson bemoans the loss of his translation of 
Horace ' lighted by the Stagerite '. 

58. Plato. Though the founder of the Academy must have 
stood high in Jonson's regard, he writes, Disc, pp. 29. 4 fF. : ' It is no 
wonder men's eminence appears in their own way. . . . The most 
eloquent Plato's speech, which he made for Socrates, is neither 
worthy the patron, nor the person defended.' Cf. ibid., pp. 58. 18, 
82. 9 ff. Thvcidides, Li vie. Jonson has no other reference to 
the historian of the Pcloponnesian War, nor to the prolific Augustan 
prose writer, except the unimportant advice, Disc, p. 57. 15, that 
he be read before Sallust. 

59. Tacitvs. The style of this historian is considered Disc. 62. 
22 ff. 199. Of his histories, the Germania, Historiae, and Annals 
of the Time of the Julian Dynasty, Jonson had studied most 
thoroughly the last, and made it the chief source for his Sejanus. 
He discusses him with Drummond, vol. 9. 376, viii: 'That 
Petronius, Plinius Secundus, Tacitus, spoke best Latine ; . . . 
Juvenal, Perse, Horace, Martial, for delight ; and so was Pindar.' 

62. Homer. Z>/>r.,p.86.6: 'The best masters of the epic, Homer 
and Virgil ; ' ibid., p. 77. 25 Jonson makes him a poet to be imitated, 
and the master of Virgil ; and other mention is made of him 
in exemplifying critical points, ibid. 14. 19, 39. 27, 82. 10, 87. 29. 

64. Virgil. Disc, p. 29. 3 : ' Virgil's felicity left him in prose ; ' 
ibid. 57. 28: 'The reading of Homer and Virgil is . . . the best 
way of informing youth^and confirming man;' ibid., p. 76. 28: 'It is 
said of the incomparable Virgil that he brought forth his verses like 
a bear, and after formed them with licking ; ' Jonson calls him an 



178 The Silent Woman [act il 

imitator of Homer, ibid., p. 77. 26, and names both as masters of the 
epic, ibid., p. 86. 9. Cf. ibid., pp. 61. 27, 63. 22. Horace. Jonson's 
admiration for Horace is shown in his translation and annotation 
of the Ars Poetica, as well as by frequent quotation and adaptation. 
He makes him the ideal critic of poetry, Disc, pp. 80. i8fF., and 
discusses his opinions, ibid., pp. 50. 31, 74. 12, 77. 22 ff., 78. 20, 
and 84. 

67. Lycophron. Lycophron, a grammarian and critic of the 
Alexandrian School under Ptolemy Philadelphus, wrote a treatise 
on the nature and history of comedy, and some sixty tragedies. 
Nothing of his work is extant except some fragments of the above, 
and a monologue on Cassatidra, destitute of poetic merit, and 
proverbially obscure. 

68. Seneca, the tragoedian. The identity of this Roman and 
that of the moralist, the tutor and adviser, and afterwards the 
victim of Nero, has never been proved, but scholars believe them 
to be one and the same man. Cf. Merivale, History of the Romans 
under the Empire (ed. 1865) 6. 382; Conington's Essay, Seneca, 
Poet and Philosopher, in vol. i Miscellaneous Writings, 1892. 
For Seneca's influence on English tragedy, cf. J. W. Cunliffe's 
essay (London, 1893), and Ward, Eyig. Dram. Lit. i. 189 ff. 
Between the years 1559 and 1581 all the ten tragedies were trans- 
lated into English. Thomas Newton collected the work of the 
'laudable authors', in 1 581, in Seneca his tenfie Tragedies trans- 
lated into Englysh. Lvcan. ' Lucan, taken in parts, was 
good divided ; read altogidder, merited not the name of a Poet.' 
So Drummond reports {Conv. 370) of the Latin poet whose epic on 
the war between Caesar and Pompey is his greatest achievement. 

69. Martial, Ivvenal. The last two are to be read ' for 
delight ', Conv. p. 376. Two epigrams of Martial Jonson trans- 
lated vol. 9, pp. 127, 345; cf. vol. 3. 388. For Juvenal cf. 
Introd., ip. Iff. and Conv., pp. 366, 377. He is mentioned Disc, 
p. 86. 21. Avsonivs. Decimus Magnus Ausonius (310-394) 
was the best Latin poet of the fourth century a. d. He was a 
Christian ; the tutor to Gratian, son of Valentinian ; and became 
consul in 379. There is a folio of his works dated at Venice, 
1472. Stativs. Virgil and Statius are named together as 
imitators of Homer, Disc, p. 77. 26. His miscellaneous collection 
called Silvae may have suggested the name for Jonson's Silva, 
Timber or Discoveries. 



sc. Ill] Notes 179 

70. Politian, Valerivs riaccvs. Angelus Politianus was an 
Italian humanist living 1454-94, the author of Greek and Latin 
epigrams; the translator of five books of the Ib'ad, and of 
Epictitus, Galen, &c., and the editor of the Pandects of Justinian. 
He was Professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Florence 
from 1484. His patron was the powerful Lorenzo de Medici. 
Valerius Flaccus, was a subject both of Vespasian and Titus, 
dying 90 a. d. His unfinished epic, the Argonautica, is a para- 
phrase of the poem by Apollonius Rhodius. 

76. Persivs. Cf. Conv. vol. 9. 377. 

80. Syntagma luris ciuilis. Daw translates the Greek (tvv- 
Tayixa into Latin and plunges ahead with ' Corpus luris ciuilis ', 
which Blackstone, Coimn. Introd. Sec. 3, § 81 defines : ' The body of 
the Roman Law is the term applied to the methodical collection, or 
code, of the Roman laws, compiled under the auspices of Justinian 
and finished by Tribonian and other lawyers about the year 533 a.d.' 
This code is still in force in many of the states of modern Europe, 
and to it all refer as authority or written reason. It was compiled 
in the following order: (i) In 529 Justinian had a compilation of 
laws in twelve books made called Codex vetus, which is now lost. 
(2) The Pandects or Digests were made in 533 in fifty books, 
being extracts from the writings of thirty-nine jurists, and carrying 
the complete name of Digesta sive Pandectae juris emicleati ex 
omni vetere jure coUecti. (3) Also in 533 the Institutes in four 
books containing the elements of legal science, founded on the 
commentaries of Gaius. (4) In 534 there was a revision of the 
Codex in thirteen books called Codex repetitae praelectionis. (5) 
The NoveUae Constitutiones, 154 constitutions, were published at 
various times during Justinian's reign. (6) Sixteen others were 
collected after his death, and are known also by the name of 
NoveUae. These various collections were always called by their 
separate titles until 1604, when Dionysius Gothofredus gave as title 
to the second edition of his great glossed collection Corpus luris 
Civilis. It may be added that although England never adopted 
Roman law as a complete system, its influence in the formation of 
the Common Law cannot be denied by the impartial inquirer. 

8L Corpus luris Canonici, Blackstone, Co7n7n. InixoA. Sec. 3. 
§ 82 : 'The body of the Roman canon or ecclesiastical law is a 
compilation taken from the opinions of the ancient Latin fathers, 
the decrees of general councils, and the decretal epistles and bulls 



i8o The Silent Woman [act ii 

of the holy see. . . . Gratlan's decree, Gregory's decretals, the sixth 
decretal, the Clementine constitutions, and the extravagants of 
John and his successors, form the corpus juris canonici, or body of 
the Roman canon law.' 

82. King of Spaines bible. C. says aptly of the passage of 
which this is a part, ' Fielding must have had this passage in his 
memory, when he makes Ensign Northerton damn Hovio with all 
his heart, and curse Korderius for another son of something or 
other that has got him many a flogging'. Daw refers to the 
Antwerp Polyglot, an eight- volume Bible published at Antwerp 
1569-72 with the sanction of Philip II. It was edited by Arias 
Montanus, and printed by Christopher Plantin. Cf. Hallam, Lit. 
of Europe, 2. 136, 484. 

86, a Dutch-man. It seems traditional that whatever has 
sounded strange in speech to English cars has been denominated 
Dutch. Alchem. 2. i, p. 48 : Mammon declares that Solomon and 
Adam have written of the philosopher's stone ' in High Dutch '. In 
Dekker's works the word Dutch (Deutsch) seems used uniformly 
for the word Germaji (a custom surviving in parts of America), 
e.g. Laiithoni a?td Caiidle- Light, Pr. Wks. 4. 188; Addison, Spec- 
tator, 135; and Earle, Micro-C, p. 53. 

89. Prangois Vatable was cure of Bramet, professor of 
Hebrew from 1531 at the royal college of three languages (estab- 
lished by Francis I in Paris), and at his death in 1517 was Abbe 
of Bellozane. A famous lecturer, he has left little in the way of 
writing but translations, and commentaries on the Hebrew Testa- 
ment. Cf. Biog. Univ. 42, and Hallam, Lit. of Eur. i. 462. 

Petrus Pomponatius (Pomponazzi) (1462-1524?) was 
doctor in medicine and philosophy at Padua, later holding the chair 
in philosophy there. He was a famous disputant, and lectured at 
Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna. His best known work, De Immor- 
ialiiate, was publicly burned at Venice, and the friendship of 
Bembo and Leo X, as well as his own defense of his arguments, 
never cleared his name of the charge of infidelity. Cf. Biog. Univ. 
34, and Hallam, Lit. of Eur. i. 435. 

Diego, or Jacobus, Simancas (also called Didacus) was a 
Cordovan living during the second half of the sixteenth century. 
He was a teacher of canon and civil law at Salamanca, royal 
councilor at Valladolid, and Bishop successively of Ciudad 
Rodrigo, of Badajoz, and Zamora. He wrote De Catholicis In- 



sc. Ill] Notes i8i 

sittutionibus liber, De Pn'mogenitis Hispaniae libri quinque, De 
Republica libri ix, etc. Cf. Jocher, Allgemeine Gelehrk Lexicon, 
Leipzig, 1 75 1. 

100. dotes. This is a rare use of the word, Cf. Underwoods 
loo, vol. 9. 41 : 

I durst not aim at that ; the dotes were such 
Thereof, no notion can express how much 
Their caract was. 

Sidney, Arcadia 3. 276 (1622): 'ExtolUng the goodly dotes of 
Mopsa.'— TV. E. D. 

102. 'Tis her vertue : i.e. silence is her virtue. 

108. euery man, that writes in verse, is not a Poet. 
Jonson discusses (Z>zjf., p. 76. 28) how: 'A rhymer and a poet are 
two things.' Mercury remarks of Hedon, Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 239: 
' Himself is a rhymer, and that 's thought better than a poet.' Cf. 
Dedication to Volp. 

110-11. the poore fellowes that liue by it. We forget the 
Jack Daw that says this, and remember that the poet who penned 
the lines well knew what it meant to have as the only protection 
against poverty, his poetry. Cf. Poet. i. i, p. 385, where Tucca 
describes the poets : ' They are a sort of poor starved rascals, that 
are ever wrapt up in foul linen ; and can boast of nothing but 
a lean visage, peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblems of 
beggary.' 

117. noble Sidney liues by his. Sir Philip Sidney died in 
1586, but his pastoral romance Arcadia was not published until 
1590, his sonnets Astrophel and Stella in 1591, and his Defense of 
Poesie in 1595. There was no complete edition of his works until 
1725, and the best at present is that of Grosart, 1873. Before 
they were published, however, Sidney was ' living by his works ', for 
the Arcadian prose was almost as much a fashion as that of 
Euphues (cf. note 2. 2. 118). His sonnets have a charm never to 
be lost, and his Defense is criticism of a high order. Drum- 
mond records an insignificant but just criticism vol. 9. 366 : 
' Sidney did not keep a decorum in making every one speak as 
well as himself.' Jonson's relations to this ' noble family ' were of 
the pleasantest ; many of his occasional verses are addressed to 
them, the most famous being the immortal lines to ' Sidney's sister. 
Pembroke's mother'. In connection with the pun in the word 



i82 The Silent Woman [act ii 

lives C. cites from Samuel Johnson, Prologues on the Opening of 
Drury Laiie Theatre : 

The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, 
For we that live to please, must please to live. 
And Bacon : ' Help me (dear Sovereign Lord and Master) and pity 
me so far, as I that have borne a Bag, be not now in my Age 
forced in effect to bear a Wallet, and I that desire to live by study, 
may not be driven to study to live.' King, Class, and For. Quot. 
(1904), no. 674, quotes Auct. Her. 4, 28, 39 : ' Esse oportet ut vivas, 
non vivere ut edas.' 

Act II. Scene IIII. 

5. worship me. An extravagant expression of the court which 
Jonson and others ridicule. Cf. -S". 0/ News i. i, p. 169 : 

Pen. Jr. He brought me the first news of my father's death, 

I thank him, and ever since I call him founder. 

Worship him, boys. 
Mayne, City Match 3. 3 : 

Fall down 
And worship sea-coals; for a ship of them 
Has made you, sir, and heir. 
Cf. 4. 5- 348. 

5-6. forbid the banes. In the eleventh canon of the Synod of 
Westminster, a. d. 1 200, occurs the earliest allusion to the neces- 
sity of a notice of intended marriage, which enacts that no mar- 
riage shall be contracted without banns thrice published in church 
(Johnson's Canons 2. 91). The existing law of the Church of 
England is expressed in the sixty- second canon : ' No minister upon 
pain of suspension,/^/' triennium ipso facto, shall celebrate matrimony 
between any persons without a faculty or licence granted by 
some of the persons in these our constitutions expressed, except 
the banns of matrimony have been read three several Sundays or 
Holy-days in the time of Divine ' Service in the parish churches 
and chapels where the said parties dwell.' The only substitute for 
banns recognized by the Church is an ordinary or special licence. 
The power of granting the former has belonged to English bishops 
since 25 Henry VIII 21. The right to grant special licence, 
belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury as legatus natus of the 
Pope, was confirmed by the Marriage Act of 1836, 

10. repent me. Reflex, use of verbs now intrans. is common 



sc. iiii] Notes 183 

among writers of this date. Cf. Abbott, § 296. kisse it. 
Furnivall quotes Florio's expression of disgust for the habit in 
the latter's edition of Montaigne's Essays (1634), p. 146: 'Let 
Courtiers first begin to leave off . . . That fond custome to kiss 
what we present to others, and Beso las manos in saluting of our 
friends.' 

36. off with this visor : ' away with this pretense.' For 
a detailed history of this word, from its original meaning of a 
movable part of the helmet, through viask, to pretense cf. 
W. and their Ways, p. 153. Cat. 5. 4, p. 315 : 

Cic. Where is thy visor or thy voice now, Lentulus? 

51. your cause : i. e. you were the principal cause of my action. 

63. inclining to dombe. A peculiar construction, where we 
would expect a noun after the preposition, and a past partic. rather 
than a pres. one, Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones 4.2:' Sophia . . . was 
a middle-sized woman, but inclining to tall.' 

98. That 's miracle. The omission of the article before the 
noun gives it the force of an adj. Cf. Abbott, § 84. 

105. cue. A^. E. D. quotes for the origin of this word, IMinsheu 
(1625) lit. Q, A qu, 'a terme vsed among Stage-plaiers, a Lat. 
Qualis, at what manner of word the actors are to beginne to speake 
one after another hath done his speech.' Also Butler (1633) Eng. 
Gram. Q, * a note of entrance for actors, because it is the first letter 
of Quando, when, showing when to enter and speak '. Cent. Diet. 
derives the word from Lat. caiida, OF. coe, Mod. F. queue — the 
tail of the speech, the last word. 

112. lack Daw will not be out. It is a coincidence that 
Drummond should have said as much of Jonson himself concerning 
his desire to exercise his wit at all times and on all people. Conv., 
vol. 9. 416: 'Given rather to losse a friend than a jest.' And so 
Tucca says of Horace, Poet. 4. i, p. 448 : ' He will sooner lose his 
best friend than his least jest.' 

141. hog-louse. Mosca, like True-wit, drags this unpoetic 
insect into a simile, Volp. 5. i, p. 289, because it can 'roule itself 
up '. Was there anything Jonson had not observed, or read of? 

143. pick- tooth. An indispensable article in a gallant's para- 
phernalia, its use as much a part of etiquette as dofiing the hat. 
For their introduction into England cf. Furnivall in the Babees 



184 The Silent Woman [act ii 

Book, p. 252. The fashion is universally satirized. Every Man 
Out 4. I, p. 124, Fallace exclaims of Fastidious: 'What a neat 
case of pick-tooths he carries about him still!' Cyn. Rev. 2. i, 
p. 248 : Asotus ' walks most commonly with a clove or pick-tooth in 
his mouth, he is the very mint of compliment.' Earle, Micro-C, 
says of The Gallant, no. 18:' His Pick-tooth beares a great part in 
his discourse.' Overbury, Characters, The Courtier : ' If you find 
him not here, you shall in Paul's, with a pick-tooth in his hat, cape- 
cloak, and a long stocking.' Ibid. The Affected Traveller : ' His 
pick-tooth is a main part of his behavior.' Guh Horn-Booke, 
Pr. Wks. 2. 232 : 'Be scene (for a turne or two) to correct your 
teeth with some quill or siluer instrument, and to cleanse your 
gummes with a wrought handkercher.' 

148. melancholique. An affectation of the Elizabethan gallant, 
especially were he in love. In Much Ado 3. 2. 52, the talk is of 
Benedict : 

Claud. The sweet youth's in love. 

D. Pedro. The greatest note of it is his melancholy. 

L.L.L. I. 2.1, Armado asks : ' Boy, what sign is it when a man of 
great spirit grows melancholy ? ' And he answers it himself in line 
80: 'I am in love.' John Davies, Epig. 47, Meditations of a 
Gull: 

See yonder melancholy gentleman 

Which, hoodwink'd with his hat, alone doth sit ! 

Life and Death of Lord Cromwell 3. 2 : 

My nobility is wonderfully melancholy: 

Is it not most gentlemanlike to be melancholy? 

Finally, as an analysis of this mood, Burton wrote the book which 
bears its name. 

153. a meere talking mole. Upton and Whalley think ' mole ' 
should be ' moile '. There is this much to say in favor of their 
variant, that Jack Daw is more of a talking mule than a blind mole. 
'Moile' is used for 'mule' (fol. 16 16) Eveiy Man Out 2. i, 
p. 59 : ' He was never born to ride upon a moile.' no mush- 
rome was euer so fresh. The suggestion of this speech is 
Plautus, Bacch. 4. 7. 23 : 

lam nihil sapit, 
Nee sentit; tanti'st, quanti est fungus putidus. 



sc. iiii] Notes 185 

Fungus is explained by Lambinus {Remarks on Epicoene, p. 73), 
* Insipidus est suapte natura. Itaque a cocis multo pipere et oleo et 
vino et sale condiri solet. Hinc fungi dicuntur, qui nihil sapiunt.' 
New knights Jonson likes to designate by the uncomplimentary 
epithet y««^«x. Every Man Out i. i, p. 36, Macilente rails against 
Such bulrushes ; these mushroom gentlemen, 
That shoot up in a night to place and worship. 
Cat. 2. I, p. 221, Sempronia scorns to 'glorify a mushroom! one 
of yesterday ! ' 



Act II. Scene V. 

32-3. audacious ornaments. Z. L. Z. 5. i. 5, Sir Nathaniel 
praises Holofernes as, ' Witty without affectation, audacious without 
impudency, learned without opinion '. 

42. iumpe right. For this verb, cf. Earle, Micro-C. A 
Flatterer, p. 91: 'All his affections iumpe euen with yours. 
He wonders how your two opinions should iumpe in that man.' 
O/-^. I. 3. 5: 

But though they jump not on a just account, 

. . . yet do they all confirm 

A Turkish fleet. 

Goldsmith, Good Nat. Man 5.1:' Resolutions are well kept when 
they jump with inclination.' 
Cf. also Lyly, Campaspe, 1.3: 

Cr. Thou thinkest it a grace to be opposite against Alexander. 

DioG. And thou to be iump with Alexander. 

68. heicfar. Heifer, used here as yoke-mate. Morose speaks 
without delicacy. Cf. Judges 14. 18, where Samson alludes to his 
wife by this term. In Bar. Fair 4. 4, p. 472, Purecraft cries, 
' O, that I might be his yoke-fellow ! ' 

71. lace- women. Lace was not made in England until the 
last half of the sixteenth century. The makers were foreigners, 
generally refugees from Alenfon and Valenciennes, in Cranfield, 
Bedfordshire, Bucks, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire ; Honi- 
ton lace was first introduced into Devon. As trimming lace was 
immensely popular at this time. (Traill, Social Eyig. 3. 500.) 

72. French intelligences. France was the home of the 
fashions even before the seventeenth century, as innumerable 

N 



i86 The Silent Woman [act ii 

literary allusions make plain. Cf. the description, D. A. 2. 3, 
p. 66, which Fitzdottrel gives his wife : 

I was so employ'd . . . studying 

For footmen for you, fine-paced huishers, pages. 

To serve you on the knee ; with what knight's wife 

To bear your train, and sit with your four women, 

In council, and receive intelligences 

From foreign parts, to dress you at all pieces. 

77. sleeues. The sleeves of doublets were originally separate 
articles, joined to the doublet with points. Marston, Dutch CourUzan 
3- 3: 

Mrs. Mulligrub. What, Christian ! my hat and apron : here, 
take my sleeves. 

Mulligrub. Whither, in the rank name of madness — whither ? 

Stubbes thinks the variety of sleeves entirely too great (pp. 74 ff.). 

78. cut might mean the slashes made in the gowns through 
which puffed silk appeared ; or it might mean the general cut or 
style of a garment, as Marston, Afalcofiten/ {1604) 5. 3 : ' Maquarelle 
insists, this is a stale cut; you must come in fashion.' For the 
first cf. Muck Ado 3. 4. 19 : Marg. ' Cloth o' gold, and cuts, and 
laced with silver, set with pearls, down sleeves, side sleeves, and 
skirts, round underborne with a bluish tinsel' wire was 
used to stiffen clothing and to hold the hair in place in 
the aggressive coiffures of the time. Stubbes, p. 67, attacks the 
fashion: 'Then foUoweth the training and tricking of their beds 
in laying out their hair to the shewe, which of force must be curled, 
frilled, and crisped, laid out (a World to see !) on wreathes & 
borders from one eare to another. And least it should fall down 
it is vnder propped with forks, wyers, & I can not tel what, 
rather like grime sterne monsters, then chaste christian matrons.' 
Gosson, Pleasant Quippes for New Fangled Gentlewomen (1595), 

These flaming heads with staring haire. 
These wyers turnde like homes of ram : 

These painted faces which they weare, — 
Can any tell from whence they came? 

C. has several quotations, Beau, and Fletch., Philaster 2.2:' Here 's 
no scarlet to blush the sin out it was given for. This wire mine own 
hair covers,' &c. Middleton, Michaelmas Term 3. i : ' Excellent 



sc. v] Notes 187 

exceeding i' faith ; a narrow-eared wire sets out a cheek so fat and 
so full ; and, if you be rul'd by me, you shall wear your hair still like 
a mock-face behind.' ruflfe. In the sixteenth century they were 
made of muslin or lawn edged with lace, plaited or goffered, and 
stiffly starched ; they were worn by both men and women. Some, 
very broad, projected six inches or more in all directions; in 
Elizabeth's time, that is on Feb. i, 1579, the Queen gave an order 
to diminish the size of this fashionable neck-gear. Stubbes treats 
of them pp. 51 ff. and 70 fF. On p. 52 : ' Wot you what ? the deuil, 
as he in the fulnes of his malice, first inuented these great ruffes, 
so hath hee now found out also two great stayes to beare vp and 
maintain that his kingdom of great ruffes . . , certaine kinds of 
liquid matter which they call Starch . . . the other pillar is a cer- 
taine deuice made of wyers, crested for the purpose, whipped ouer 
either with gold, thred, siluer or silk, & this hee calleth a sup- 
portasse, or vnderpropper.' He rails at them, on p. 70, because 
they are ' wrought all ouer with needlework, speckled and sparkled 
here and there with the sonne, the moone, and many other anti- 
quities '. 

79. fanne. Fans seem to have made their appearance in Eng- 
land when much new finery was seen for the first time, in 
Elizabeth's reign. Planch^ says : ' They were made of feathers 
and hung to the girdle by a gold or silver chain. The handles 
were composed of gold, silver, or ivory of elaborate workmanship, 
and were sometimes inlaid with precious stones.' Forty pounds 
was not a high price for a fine one. The folding variety grew 
into favor under James I. As to the satirists, Gosson condemns 
them along with busks, stays, hoops, and aprons ; Stubbes fails to 
count them among abuses; Stow (cf. Harrison, part 2. 34) says: 
* Womens Maskes, Buskes, Mufs, Fannes, Perewigs, and Bodkins ' 
were the invention ' in Italy by Curtezans ', and that they came 
through France into England at the time of the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, Aug. 24, 1572. Gosson, Pleasant Quippes 

(1595): 

Were fannes and flappes of feathers fond, 

To flit away the flisking flies. 
And taile of mare that hangs on ground, 

When heat of summer doth arise, 
The wit of women we might praise 
For finding out so great an ease. 
N 3 



i88 The Silent Woman [act ii 

But seeing they are still in hand 

In house, in field, in church, in street, 
In summer, winter, water, land. 

In colde, in heate, in drie, in weet, 
I iudge they are for wiues such tooles 

As babies are, in playes, for fooles. 

80. skarfe. Stubbes says this silken drapery was both need- 
less and gaudy (p. 79) : ' Then must they haue their scarfs cast 
about their faces, and fluttering in the wind, with great lapels at 
euery end, either of gold or siluer or silk, which they say they wear 
to keep them from sun-burning.' Cf. Lingua (1607), Haz.-Dods. 
9. 426, for an outpouring of words on women's dress similar to 
that of Morose. 

86-7. the seale of being mine. Drake, Sh. and his Times, 
p. 108, says that the regular betrothal consisted of four parts, the 
joining of hands, the mutually given kiss, the interchangement of 
rings, and the testimony of witnesses. Morose is not romantic 
enough to think of the rings, and in too much of a hurry to bother 
about witnesses for the betrothal, when the wedding was going to 
take place at once. It was the general custom to solemnize the 
wedding forty days after the betrothal. Two G. of Ver. 2. 2. 5 : 

Julia. Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake. 

Pro. Why then we'll make exchange ; here take you this. 

Julia. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss. 

96-7. your now-mistris. Here an adv. modifies a noun, as 
in the modern journalistic phrase, ' the then governor '. 

107. tweluepeny ordinary. Cf. note PROL. 26. it 

knighthood. Abbott, § 228, explains that it is an early provincial 
form of its, especially used in addressing a child or one spoken to 
contemptuously. N. E. D. recognizes it as at present a dialectic 
poss. pron. Cf. 2. 5. in 'it friends', and King John 2. i. 160 : 
Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig. 

108-9. tell tales for it. Board given free to a good talker was 
no bad advertisement, say the satirists. Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 248, 
Mercury asserts regarding Amorphus, ' The wife of the ordinary 
gives him his diet to maintain her table in discourse '. Guls Horn- 
Booke, p. 241 : ' Let your tongue walke faster then your teeth . . . 
repeat by heart either some verses of your owne or of any other 



sc. v] Notes 189 

mans, stretching euen very good lines vpon the rack of your cen- 
sure : though it be against all law, honestie, or conscience, it may 
chance saue you the price of your Ordinary, and beget you other 
Suppliments. Marry, I would further intreat our Poet to be in 
league with the mistress of the Ordinary, because from her (vpon 
condition that he will but rhyme knights and yong gentlemen 
to her house, and maintaine the table in good fooling) he may 
easily make vp his mouth at her cost Gratis^ 

109. vacation. These were the idle times in London; cf. 
note I. I. 50, and Dekker, The Dead Teanne^ Pr. Wks. 4. 24flf. : 
* For alasse there are certaine Canker- Wormes (called Vacations) 
that destroy the Trees of my Inhabitants, so soon as euer they 
beare any Fruite. These Vacations are to mine owne body like 
long and wasting consumptions.' He says {Pierce Pennylesse, Pr. 
Wks. I. 96) of the devil, that 'All the vacations you may eyther 
meet him at dicing Ordinaries'. So Mayne, City Match 2. 6, 
Roseclap, the master of the ordinary, is asked. 

How now, Roseclap, 
Pensive, and cursing the long vacation? 

110. Coleharbor — or Cold Harborough — stood to the west 
of the old Swan Stairs on Upper Thames Street in the parish of 
All Hallows the less. It was built by a rich City merchant. Sir 
John Poultney, four times ]\Iayor of London, At the end of the 
fourteenth century it belonged to John Holland, Duke of Exeter, 
son of Thomas Holland, Duke of Kent, and Joan Plantagenet, 
the 'Fair Maid of Kent'. Richard III gave it to the Heralds 
for their college. They were turned out by Henry VII, who gave 
the house to his mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond. His 
son gave it to the Earl of Shrewsbury, by whose son it was taken 
down, one knows not why, and mean tenements erected in its 
place for the river-side working-men, — Bessint, London, 166. When 
it became a place of sanctuary is not known, nor whether its name 
signifies a cold bare place of shelter, but references to it as a 
sanctuary are frequent, Nashe, Have with you to Saffron Walden 
(1596): 'Or hast thou tooke thee a chamber in Cold Harbour?' 
Westward Ho \. i,Dram. Wks. 2. 336: Justiniano. 'You swore you 
would build me a lodging by the Thames side with a water gate 
to it, or else take me a lodging in Cole Harbour,' Middleton, The 



igo The Sileitt JVomajt [act ii 

Black Book, Works, 8.14: ' What ! Is not our house our own 
Cole Harbour, our castle of come-down and lie-down?' ibid., 
Tn'ck to catch the Old One has the first scene in Act 4, an apart- 
ment in ' Cole Harbour '. 

113. Cranes. The Three Crazies m the Vhitry is called by 
mine host of the Black Bear at Cumnor the most topping tavern 
in London {Kejiilworth i). It was situated in Upper Thames 
Street at the top of what is still called Three Cranes Lane. Bar. 
Fair i. i, p. 356: 'A pox on these pretenders to wit! Your 
Three Cranes, Mitre, and Mermaid-men!' D. A. i. i, p. 12, 
Iniquity tells what he will do : 

Nay, boy, I will bring thee to the bawds and the roysters 

At Billingsgate, feasting with claret-wine and oysters; 

From thence shoot the Bridge, child, to the Cranes in the 

Vintry 
And see there the gimlets, how they make their entry. 

Pepys, Diary, Jan. 23, 1662, and Sept. 2, 1666, mentions the old 
tavern : ' Good hopes there was of stopping it [the Fire] at the 
Three Cranes above, and at Butolph's Wharf below bridge, but 
the wind carries it into the city.' 

113-4. Beare at the Bridge-foot. A famous tavern on the 
Surrey side, just below old London Bridge, which stood until 
Dec. 1 76 1, when the shops and houses on the bridge were 
removed. It is mentioned in the Pur it am, or Widow of Watting 
Street J^\6ol) : ' By your Beare at the Bridgefoot — even shalt thou.' 
At the Restoration it was well known. Cf. Pepys, Diary, Feb. 
24, 1666-7 ' * Going through Bridge by water, my waterman told 
me how the mistresse of the Bear tavern, at the Bridge Foot, did 
lately fling herself into the Thames and drown herself.' And on 
Apr. 3, 1667, in speaking of the marriage of the Duke of 
Richmond and Mrs. Stewart, 'He by a wile did fetch her 
to the Beare at the Bridge-foot, where a coach was ready, 
and they are stole away into Kent without the King's leave'. 
be drunk. Drunkenness as it existed in English alehouses, 
taverns, and inns, is pictured by Stubbes, Anat. of Ab. 107. 
Earle, Micro-C. no. 12: 'A Tauern is a degree, or (if you 
will) a pair of stairs aboue an ale-house, where men are drunk 
with more credit and apology. If the vintner's rose be at the door, 
it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the 



sc. v] Notes 191 

ivy-bush.' Burton, ^;;a/. 0/ Mel., p. 373: 'Flourishing wits, and 
men of good parts, good fashion, and good worth, basely prostitute 
themselves to every rogue's company, to take tobacco and drink, 
to roar and sing scurrile songs in base places.' About 30,000 
tuns of wine were annually imported into England at this time, 
half coming from France, and half from Italy and Spain. There 
was large manufacture at home of hippocras, clary, ales, beers, &c, 

118. take vp the commoditie of pipkins. To borrow 
money by accepting goods instead of coin, and selling these at 
a low rate for present cash, was a poor venture always, but Morose 
suggests the most miserable of purchases. Greene, Defense of 
Conny-Catching, Pr. Wks. 11.53, The borrower ' shal haue grant of 
money and commodities together, so, that if he borrow a hundred 
pounds, he shal haue forty in siluer, and threescore in wares, dead 
stuffe Got wot ; as Lute-strings, Hobby horses, &c.' Dekker, 
Lanthorne and Candle-Lighi, Pr. Wks. 3. 228 ff., and Seiien Deadly 
Sinnes, ibid. i. 64: 'These are Vsurers: who for a little money, 
and a great deale of trash : (as Fire-shouels, browne-paper, motley 
cloake-bags etc.) bring yong Nouices into a foole's Paradise 
till they haue sealed the Morgage of their landes . . . Commodities 
. . . scarce yeeld the third part of that sum for which they take 
them vp.' Harpagon in Moliere's L'Avare lends money out in 
the same way. 

120. browne bakers widdow. What there was about a 
brown baker that was belittling I do not know. Strype defines the 
expression as meaning ' tourte baker '. Cf. Dekker 2 Honest 
Whore 4. 2 : ' The linen-draper, he that's more patient than a brown 
baker.' Perhaps a pun is meant. Cf. Davenant, The Wits i. 2 
* a poor BroAvnist's widow '. 

123. master of a dancing schoole. Greene, Qiiippe for an 
Vpstart Courtier, Pr. Wks. 11. 292 : 'And for you, master Vsher 
of the dauncing schoole, you are a leader into all misrule, you 
instruct Gentlemen to order their feet, when you driue them to 
misorder their manners, you are a bad fellow that stand vpon 
your tricks and capers, till you make young Gentlemen caper 
without their landes : why sir to be flat with you : you liue by your 
legs, as a iugler by his hands, you are giuen ouer to the pomps 
and vanities of the world.' Pamphleteers agree in blackening 
the character of these masters and their schools. Dekker, Deuils 



192 The Silent IVotnan [act ii 

Answer to Pierce Penny lesse, Pr. Wks. i. 109, tells of a gallant 
on his way to hell, who confesses: 'Had he (the father) set me 
to Grammar Schoole as I set myself to dauncing schoole 
instead of treading corantoes and making Fidlers fat with rumps 
of capon I had by this time read Homilyes '. Cf. Guls Horn-Booke, 
p. 265, and sermons of Latimer and Babington. How do you 
call him. 'From the manner in which this is printed in the 
old copies, I should take it to be personal, and one Howe to be 
pointed at, as the " worst reveller ".' — G. 

126-7. to repaire it selfe by Constantinople, Ireland, or 
Virginia. The second of these refers to the ' Plantation of Ulster ' 
by James in 1605 with English landowners; the third to the 
late Virginia colonies of 1607 and 1609; but the first is hard 
to explain. Cf. Every Man Out 4. 4, p. 129, where Puntarvolo 
took a wager of five to one that he would take his cat and his dog to 
Constantinople and return without accident. G. thinks the allusion 
to Constantinople occasioned by some happening in the Turkish 
Company established under Elizabeth. 

1 28-9. Dol Teare-sheet, or Kate Common. As various editors 
have noticed, these two names make one in the next play, the 
Alchemist, where Dol Common is the colleague and helper of Face 
and Subtle. In the thieves' cant a 'dol' is classed among the 
' autem-morts ', altar or married women. Coleridge had an idea 
that the name Tearsheet was a misprint for Tear-street, from street- 
walker, ' terere stratum ' (vtam) ; but it is improbable, despite the 
evidence of his citation from 2 I/en. IV 2. 2. 181, where the 
Prince says of Shakespeare's Doll, ' This Doll Tearsheet should be 
some road '. 

Act II. Scene VI. 

6. what a barbarian it is. The pron. is neuter, as commonly 
used for masc. Cf. 2. 2. 141, 5. 2. 38, &c. 

17-18. zealous brother. This favorite adj. of the Puritans 

Jonson turned against them whenever occasion offered. News 

from the New World, vol. 7. 343: i Her. 'Zealous women, that 

will outgroan the groaning wives of Edinburgh.' His greatest 

satiric character of the nonconformists is Zeal-of-the-land Busy. 

26. doth latino it. Cf infra, \. 53. Abbott, § 226, considers 
the Elizabethan habit of converting nouns into verbs followed by ;'/. 



sc. vi] Notes 193 

42. smocke sleek'd. C. quotes from Euphues : ' She that 
hath no glasse to dresse her head will use a bowle of water ; she 
that wanteth a sleeke stone to smooth her linnen will take a 
pibble.' Milton, Apology for S?7iectymnus, Pr. Wks. 3. 140 (ed. 
Bohn) : ' Sure he loved toothlesse satires, which I took were as 
improper as a toothed sleekstone.' 

54-5. Subject . . . Princesse. The absurd fanciful names 
used by friends, lovers, &c., calls down Jonson's ridicule, Cyn. 
Rev. 2. I. 

57. marshalling of. This intrans. use of this verb has no 
dictionary authority. 

59. Sphinx. Here she is invoked by Dauphine in her character 
of riddle-propounder. In the masque, Love Freed from Folly, 
vol. 7. 185, she is treated as the type of ignorance. 

60-1. beare-garden. The Bear Garden was on the Bankside, 
in Southwark, a royal garden or amphitheatre for the exhibition of 
bear- and bull-baiting. Wh.-C. says Stow first alludes to it in the 
Survey of 1603 as very popular, 'especially in Bear Garden, on 
the Bank's side, wherein be prepared scaffolds for beholders to 
stand upon '. Further on he says, * There be two Bear Gardens, 
the Old and New Places '. The history of these early Gardens 
still remains in some obscurity, it being asserted that there were 
as many as four, ' two amphitheatres shown on the Agas Map 
(called respectively the Bull Baiting and the Bear Bailing), another 
at the north of the Bear Garden Lane so called, leading from 
Maid Lane to the river, and one — the Hope — used also as a 
playhouse, at the south end of the same lane]'. This Bull Bailing 
amphitheatre is called on Norden's map of 1593, Bear House, 
and this, says Ordish, is the fashionable Bear Garden of Jonson's 
time, and therefore the one here referred to. Cf. also note 
3. I. 16. 

71. speake him. A Jonsonian invention, the dictionaries recog- 
nize speak with a direct pers. obj. only as a nautical term, e.g. 
{Cetil. Did.) Dana, Two Years Before Ihe Masl: 'About six 
bells, that is three o'clock p.m., we saw a sail on our larboard bow. 
I was very desirous, like every new sailor, to speak her.' 



194 The Silent Woman [act hi 



Act III. Scene I. 

1. pauca verba. The exact significance of this common ex- 
pression is not understood, but its general meaning is plain. 
Every Man In 4. i, p. 98, Wellbred says: 'O, the benchers' 
phrase, pauca verba ', meaning by ' benchers ' the ' tavern drinkers '. 
Hieronymo in the Spanish Tragedy 3. 14. 118, uses it as 'pocas 
palabras'. Shakespeare has it in M. W. of W. i. i. 123, 134, 
where Sir Hugh Evans calls ' Pauca verba, Sir John ; goot worts '. 
In Tarn, of the Shrew, Induct. 5: Sly. ' Therefore paucaspallabris; 
let the world slide.' In Z. L. L. 4. 2. 171: Holofernes. 'You 
shall not say me nay ; pauca verba.' Jonson has it again in the 
Masque of Atigurs; and Dekker in the Wonderfull Veare, p. 134, 
has the cobbler ' lay his finger on his mouth, and say, " pauca 
palabris " '. 

4-5. You were best baite me. The omission of lo before batie 
is explained, Abbott, § 351. 

7. shrouetuesday. Cf. note 1. 1. 160 for the day's ceremonies. 
From the many allusions to Saints' days and Holy days in writers 
of this period it seems evident that the change from Catholicism 
to Protestantism had not interfered with public feasts or merry- 
makings. 

8. whitsontide-veluet-cap. Traill, Social England 3. 364, 
calls attention to the fact that caps, fully wrought in England, had 
to be worn by almost all persons of six years and upwards, on 
every Sunday and Holy Day, under penalty of a fine. 

10. vnder correction. Like ufider your favor, this was a 
common qualifying expression. G. explains that ' using these 
the lie might be given, without subjecting the speaker to the 
absolute necessity of receiving a challenge'. Z. Z. Z. 5. 2. 488: 

Costard. Not so, sir ; under correction, sir ; I hope it is 
not so. 
Hen. F3. 2. 129 : 

Flu. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your 
correction, there is not many of your nation — . 

12. reported . . . for my humor. Otter's use of this word 
does not fit the grave interpretation, Every Man Out, Induct., 
vol. 2. 1 6. 



sc. i] Notes 195 

16. Paris-garden. Perhaps originally Paris from Robert of 
Paris, or parish from Parish garden, for the Templars constituted 
part of this land a chapelry, the people crossing the Thames in 
a barge to worship there. In Jonson's day it was a manor or 
liberty west of the Clink on the Bankside in Southwark, almost 
identical with the parish of Christ Church, made from it in 1670-1. 
It was a garden with many trees ' full of hiding-places ', says Wh.-C, 
' with the convenience of river-side landing-places '. As for the 
bear-garden which took this name, and was the first one on the 
Surrey side, cf. Ordish, London Theatres, chs. 5, 7, 8. As early as 
Richard II's time bulls and bears were kept there, and a proclama- 
tion exists ordering the butchers of London to purchase some 
ground ' iuxta domum Roberti de Parys ' for their garbage to be 
dumped upon. When Henslowe and Alleyn leased Paris Garden 
in Elizabeth's reign, and later in that of James, there were times 
when it was converted into a theatre. Sunday was the day for 
bear-baiting under Henry VIII, Mary, and Elizabeth, but James I 
forbade it on this day ; cf. Arber, Garner, vol. 4. The King's 
Majesty's Declaration to his Subjects, concerning lawful sports to be 
vsed (1618). Paris Garden was closed by Parhament in 1642, 
and, though opened after the Restoration, it was not much 
frequented. 

l^u^ioxi, Lo7idon and the Country Carbonadoed (1632), writes of 
Paris Garden : ' Here come few that either regard their credit or 
loss of time; the swaggering Roarer, the Cunning Cheater; the 
rotten Bawd ; the swearing Drunkard, and the bloody Butcher have 
their rendezvous here, and are of chief place and respect.' Jonson 
writes again. Execration upon Vulcan, vol. 8. 406 : ' That accursed 
ground, the Paris-Garden'. Epig. 133, vol. 8. 236 : 'The meat- 
boat of bear's coUige, Paris-garden '. 

29. banke-side. Besant, London, p. 356, says of this southern 
bank of the Thames that ' in the time of the Tudors it consisted of 
a single row of houses, built on a dike or levee, higher both than 
the river at high tide and the ground behind the bank. Before the 
building of the bank this must have been a swamp covered with 
water at every tide; it was now laid out in fields, meadows, and 
gardens. At one end of the Bank Side stood the Clink Prison, 
Winchester House, and St. Mary Overies Church. At the other 



196 The Silent Woman [act hi 

end was the Falcon Tavern with its stairs, and behind it was 
placed the Paris-Gardens.' Ibid. p. 362 : ' This place hath an ill 
name, by reason of evil-doers, who were long permitted to live 
here — a place notorious for 300 years as the common sink of the 
city. No reputable citizen would have his country-house and 
garden on Bank Side.' Master of the garden. Up to 1573 
' the king's bear- ward was an officer of the royal house-hold, having 
his office or head quarters in Paris Garden, where the animals 
were kept and nourished by the offal of the city of London, in 
accordance with a proclamation of Richard II. The office of 
bear- ward, or master of Paris Garden, became an office of privilege, 
held by royal letters patent, the profits of the public exhibitions 
being the rewards or perquisites, in respect of which the grant of 
the office was made a favour'. — Ordish, London Theatres, pp. 203 ff. 
Under Elizabeth, Ralph and Edward Bowes were successively 
masters of the game of Paris Garden ; later the office was held and 
Paris Garden leased by Henslowe and Alleyn. 

32. perfum'd for great ladies. Cf. the following scene 
between Mrs. Otter and her husband with that in Poei. 2. i. 
between Chloe and her husband Albinus. Both are preparing to 
receive courtiers and 'great ladies'. Ibid. 2. i, p. 391 : 

Chloe. Come bring those perfumes forward a little, and 
strew some roses and violets here : Fie ! here be roomes savour the 
most pitifully rank that ever I felt. I cry the gods mercy {sees 
Albinus), my husband's in the wind of us I 

instrument. Mrs. Otter means agrceineni. 
41-2. stockings, one silke, three worsted. Silk hose were 
introduced in Elizabeth's time, and worn by the fashionable. The 
comedies are bristling with comic allusions to the fashion, but we 
omit them to quote Stubbes, Anai. of Ab., ^i. 57: 'Then haue 
they nether-stocks to these gay hosen, not of cloth (though neuer 
so fine) for that is thought too base, but of larnsey, worsted, silk, 
thred, and such like, or else at the least of the finest yarn that can 
be, and so curiously knit with open seam down the leg, with quirks 
and clocks about the ancles, and sometime (haply) interlaced with 
gold or siluer threds, as is wonderful to behold. And to such 
insolancy and outrage it is now growen, that euery one (almost) 
though otherwise verie poor, hauing scarce fortie shillings of wages 
by the yeer, will be sure to haue two or three paire of these silk 



sc. i] Notes 197 

neither-stocks.' Worsted was a woolen cloth or yarn which took 
its name from the place of its manufacture, Worstead, in Norfolk, 
where it was first made about the time of Henry I. 

47-8. Easter, or Whitson-holy-daies. For Easter celebra- 
tions cf. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 1. 161, 280 ff.; Drake, Sh. and his Times, 
pp. 85 flf. The whole week succeeding Easter was Eastertide, and 
was given to various pastimes, games of hand-ball, dancing, feasts, &c. 
At Whitsuntide the rural sports and feasting resembled May-Day, 
and included Whitsun-ales. Sometimes a Lord of Misrule was 
elected, and the merry-making took place in the churchyard on 
a Sabbath-day. 

48-9. banqueting-house. Doubtless the one at Whitehall, 
where masques and other royal entertainments were held. Jonson's 
Pltaszire reconciled io Virtue was performed there on Twelfth Night, 
16 17- 18; Nepiunes Tritiviph in 1623, &c. C. says that on holy- 
days bears were baited in the courtyard for the amusement of the 
populace; from the context here such an inference is easily 
reached. 

49. Ned Whiting, or George Stone. Bears at this time 
generally carried the names of their owners. These must have 
been well known, for there is a reference to the second of them in 
the Pttriiane, or Widow of Wailiiig Street (1607) 3. 6: 

Idle. Arrested, George? 

Pye. Arrested. Guess, guess, — how many dogs do you think 
I had upon me ? 

Idle. Dogs ? I say, I know not. 

Pye. Almost as many as George Stone, the bear; three at 
once, three at once. 

Sir John Davy's Epigrains names two other bears in describing 
a lawyer who forsakes the court : 

and for his recreation 
To Paris Garden doth himself withdraw . . . 
Leaving old Plowden, Dyer, and Brooke alone 
To see old Harry Hunks and Sarcasson. 

54. vellet. This word is variously written by Jonson. Mrs. 
Otter calls it veluet 3. i. 8; here she says vellet; she says veluet 
again, 3. 2. 76; and in 5, i. 53 La-Foole uses vellet. On the ety- 
mology of velvet, velure, Mr. Henry Nicol says : ' The second v of 
velvet is an alteration of iv {velwet, Promptorium), and this of u. 



igS The Silent Woman [act hi 

That the n of ME. veluel formed a separate syllable is shown 
by the meter of Chaucer : 

And CO I uered it | with ve | lu et | tes blew | e. 

Squire's Tale 644. 

ME. veluei comes from OF. veluei . . . corresponds to a hypo- 
thetical Latin vilhitittum, being a diminutive of Fr. velu . . . 
primitive Lat. villus' 

58. behaue . . . distinctly. Mrs. Otter's language seems 
Malapropian, though C. maintains that the expression is used in 
Scotland. 

Act III. Scene II. 

8. tosts, and butter. This unkind cut at Otter is explained 
by Falstaff s use of the term in regard to his gallant soldiers. 
1 Hen. IV 4. 3. 20 : ' I pressed me none but such toasts-and- 
butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger then pins' heads.' 

9. wood-cocks. Another unkind epithet, meaning ' simpleton '. 
Guls Horn-Booke, Prooemium, defines them as ' Excellent birds . . . 
commonly called wood-cocks (whereof there is great store in Eng- 
land) having all their feathers plukt from their backs '. In 
Hamlet i. 3. 114, Polonius warns his daughter against 'springes 
to catch woodcocks'. L.L.L. 4. 3. 82, Biron exclaims at the 
revelation of the intrigue : ' Dumain transformed ! four woodcocks 
in a dish ! ' Z). yi. 2. i, p. 39 : Meercraft. ' Tell Master Woodcock, 
I'll not fail to meet him.' i Honest Whore i. 5, Candido is 
dubbed by Viola ' Woodcock '. 

10. tyrannie. Cf. note 2. 2. 73, and Cyii. Rev. 2. i, p. 248 : 
Mercury. ' The wife of the ordinary gives him his diet to maintain 
her table in discourse ; which, indeed, is a mere tyranny over her 
other guests.' Poet. 3. i, p. 411, Horace says of Crispinus: * This 
tyranny is strange to take mine ears up by commission (whether 
I will or no).' The impersonal is used for the personal word 
again in 3. 3. 74 ' colledge-Honors ', and in 'wedlock' for 'wife' 
Poet. 4. I, p. 445, and D. A. i. 3. 27. 

15. Anabaptist. The original name of those nonconformists 
who held baptism in infancy to be invalid, and required adults to be 
re-baptized on joining their communion, but the name is best known 
historically as applied to the followers of Thomas Miinzer, a leader 



sc. ii] Notes 199 

of the peasants' war in Germany, who was killed in battle in 1525, 
and to those of John Matthias and John Bockold, or John of 
Leyden, who committed great excesses while attempting to estab- 
lish a socialistic kingdom of New Zion in Westphalia. The name 
was early applied opprobriously to all rejecters of the AngHcan doc- 
trine as to sacraments and holy orders. 

35. idolaters. Another of the many instances in which Jonson 
derides the language of court compliment. Cat. 2. i, p. 222, 
Sempronia says of Quintus Curius to Fulvia : ' Thy idolater, I call 
him'. 

38. O no, sir : Omnia bene. The Lat. phrase begins a 
schoolboy rhyme : 

Omnia bene, sine poena, tempus est ludendi. 
Absque mora venit hora libros deponendi. 
All things go well, the hour for play, 
No fear of rod, so book away. 

42. What is he, for a vicar. Abbott, § 148, likens 'for' in 
the sense of ' considered as ' to the Ger. Was fur ein. Cf. Spenser, 
Shep. Cal. 4. 17 : ' What is he for a ladde ? ' Much Ado i. 3. 49 : 
' What is he for a fool ? ' Ram Alley, Haz.-Dods. 10. 355 : ' What 
is he for a man ? ' 

44-5. bull-rush, that were not pickt. For the use of * were ' 
for ' was ' in dependent clauses, cf. Abbott, § 301. 

46. barber of prayers. C. quotes Rabelais's description of 
Friar John as esiropier des Heures. 

58. phisiognomy of the fellow. Sheridan gives this word to 
Mrs. Malaprop, Rivals 4. 2 : ' His physiognomy so grammatical ! ' 

59. I had a dreame. 'Belief in dreams was most common. 
Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 134 ff. gives an account of interpretations 
and interpreters. Shakespeare has many allusions to this and 
allied superstitions : Mer. of Ven. 2. 5. 17 ; Rom. and Jul. 5. i. 2 ; 
Troil and Cress. 5. 3. 6. Lyly, Sapho and Phao 4. 3 : 

IsMENE. I dreamed mine eye-tooth was loose, and that I thrust 
it out with my tongue. 

MiLETA. It foretelleth the losse of a friend ; and I ever thought 
thee so full of prattle, that thou wouldst thrust out thy best friend 
with thy tatling. 

60. new pageant, and my lady Maioresse. Pageants were 



20O The Silent Woman [act hi 

given on Lord Mayor's day, on the occasion of the procession of 
any of the twelve companies, on an ambassador visiting Guild 
Hall, or on any occasion decided by royalty. Of the first, which 
is here referred to, Besant quotes, London, p. 226: 'Search all 
chronicles, all histories, and records, in what language or letter 
soever, let the inquisitive man waste the deere treasures of his time 
and eyesight, he shall conclude his life only in the certainty that 
there is no subject received into the place of his government with 
the like style and magnificence as is the Lord Mayor of the city of 
London.' Thornbury, Sh. Eng. 2. 390 ff., gives a lively description 
of the gala attire of the spectators, of the decorations of the city 
streets and houses, ' of the crafts of London in their liveries, and 
the Lord Mayor in his chain, and the aldermen in scarlet.' A 
brief, complete history is given by Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit. i. 148 : 
' These city pageants continued in favour till the outbreak of the 
Great Civil War, when the very maypoles were extirpated by 
command of Parliament. They were revived shortly before the 
Restoration, but without their former dignity ; and about the 
beginning of the eighteenth century sank to the level at which they 
still await their complete extinction.' 

62-3. China stuffes. Cf. note i. 3. 38. 

63. Artemidorvs. The dream interpreter was born at Ephesus, 
early in the second century a. d. He wrote a work on the 
interpretation of dreams, the 'OveipoKpiTmd in four books. His 
material was taken from written authorities and from facts learned 
during travel in Asia, Italy, and Greece. Cf. Reichart, Be Artemi- 
doro Daldtano (1893). 

64-5. done me many aflfronts. Do used trans, with an obj. 
noun is noticed by Abbott, § 303. N. E. D. makes this expression 
' to put an affront upon', or ' to offer an affront io\ Cf. Alchem. 
2. 2, p. 49 : ' This day thou shalt have ingots and, tomorrow, give 
lords the affront.' Z). ^. 3. i, p. 77. 

76. doublet. Stubbes objects to women wearing doublets and 
jerkins cut after the fashion of men, An. 0/ Ad., p. 73, and on pp. 56ff. : 
*I say nothing of what their doublets be made, some of Saten 
Taffatie, silk, Grogram, Chamlet, gold, siluer, & what not ; slashed, 
lagged, cut, carued, pincked, and laced with all kinds of costly lace 
of diuers and sundry colours.' 

91. sir Amorovs his feast. For this form of the genitive cf. 



sc. ii] Notes 201 

Jonson's English Grammar, ch. 13 in vol. 9. 275 of C.-G. text. 
There he calls it the ' monstrous syntax of the pronoun his joining 
with a noun betokening a possessor ; as the prince his house, for 
the princess house'. Yet he uses it not seldom. Cf. Epiccene, in 
' Persons of the Play ', ' Mute, one of Morose his seruants ' ; Sejanu.s 
his Fall; Horace his Art of Poetry; and the unfinished play 
Mortimer his Fall. Abbott, §217: ' His was sometimes used by 
mistake, for 's . . . particularly after a proper name, and with 
especial frequency when the name ends in s! 

Act III. Scene III. 

38. but take you no notice but, &e. A carelessly made 
sentence; cf Abbott, §§ii8 and 130. 

56. told him his owne. An elliptical phrase much like 'to 
hold one's own '. Field uses it \Xi Ainends for Ladies 5. 2; Haz.- 
Dods. II. 164: 'I have the most to-do to forbear unmasking me, 
that I might tell him his own.' C^.fohn 1.2:* He came unto his 
own.' 

61. I'll make one: i.e. join in the plan. Cf. M. W. of W. 
2. 3. 48, Shallow speaks : ' Bodykins, Master Page, though I now 
be old and of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches to 
make one.' Twelfth Night 2. 5. 225 : 

Mar. If you will see it, follow me. 

Sir Toby. To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent devil 
of wit. 

Sir Andrew. I'll make one too. 

64. siluer dishes. A few years before plate was an unwonted 
luxury in a citizen's family, but by the time James came to the 
throne wooden table-implements had been entirely replaced by 
pewter or silver, and among a few of the very rich by those of gold. 
Cf. The Tarn, of the Shrew 2. i. 

65-6. clap mee a cleane towell. Mee is an ethical dat. 
(Abbott, § 220), a construction which causes a play on words in 
Tarn, of the Shrew i. 2. 8 : 

Pet. Villain, I say, knock me here soundly. 
Gru. Knock you here, sir 1 Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I should 
knock you here, sir ? 

Pet. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate, 
And rap me well. 

O 



202 The Silent Woman [act hi 

68. second : i. e. ' assist ', an inexact use of second. 

75. health drunke as . . . bare. The custom of drinking 
healths Brand {Pop. Aniiq. 2. 338) bases on classic usage, quoting 
from Martial Epig. i. 72. 1-2 : 

Six cups to Naevia's health go quickly round, 
And be with seven the fair Justina 's crown'd. 

To bare the head was always a sign of respect; cf. D. A. 4. i, 
p. 98: 

Lady T. Have with them for the great caroch, six horses, 
And the two coachmen, with my Ambler bare. 

Mag. Lady 2. i, p. 36 : 

Her gentleman-usher, 
And cast-off pages, bare. 

It was done always at times when drinking healths. 2 Honest 
Whore 1.3: 

LoD. Since his cap 's round, that shall go round. Be bare 
For in the cap's praise all of you have share. 

( They bare their heads and drink.) 

Ward (1636), Woe to Drunkards, p. 543, speaks of the pot-wits 
and spirits of the buttery, ' who never bared their knees to drinke 
healthes, nor ever needed to whet their wits with wine, or arme 
their courage with pot-harnesse '. 

84. one noyse of fldlers. A noise was a company of fiddlers 
or trumpeters, who attended taverns, ordinaries, &c. C. says they 
were generally three in number, and took their name from the leader, 
as ' Mr. Sneak's noise ', ' Mr. Creak's noise ', ' Mr. Spindle's noise'. 
Tale of a Tub i. 2, p. 134: 'Press all noises of Finsbury, in our 
name.' Bar. Fair 3. i, p. 421 : Cakes. 'A set of these violins 
I would buy too, for a delicate young noise I have in the country, 
that are every one a size less than another, just like your fiddles.' 
Gip. Metamor., vol. 7. 390 : ' The king has his noise of gipsies, as 
well as of bearwards and other minstrels.' 2 Hen. IV 2. 4. 13 : 
* See if thou canst find out Sneak's noise. Mistress Tearsheet would 
fain have some music' 

Strolling fiddlers, gaining a precarious living at street corners, 
at taverns, or private feasts, are a popular subject of satire. Dek- 
ker, Seuen Deadly Sinnes, classes them with ' Anglers, Dumb 
Ministers, Players, Exchange-Wenches, Gamesters, Panders, 



sc. Ill] Notes 203 

Whores ', and makes them attendants of Sloth. Rauens Almanacke, 
Pr. Wks. 4. 192: 'O you common Fidlers Ukewise that scrape 
out a poore Huing out of dryed Cats guts : I prophecie that many 
of you shall this yeare be troubled with abhominable noises and 
singing in your head and those that suruiue shall feede vpon 
melody for want of meate, playing by two of the clock in a frostie 
morning vnder a window, and then bee mock'd with a shilling 
tyed (through a hole) to a string, which shall be throwne to make 
it Jingle in your ears, but presently be drawne vp againe, whilst 
you rake in the dust for a largesse.' 

85. trumpeters. Their picture is drawn by Earle, Micro-C. 
no, 48, A Trumpeter. ' His face is as brazen as his Trumpet, 
and (which is worse) as a Fidlers, from whom he differeth only in 
this, that his impudence is dearer . . . Hee was whilome the sound 
of warre, but now of Peace; yet as terrible as euer, for where- 
soeuer hee comes they are sure to pay for it. He is the common 
attendant of glittering folkes, whether in the Court or Stage, where 
he is alwaies the Prologues Prologue.' 

87. correspondence. It is always preceded with a modifying 
adj. as here, and in Sej. 5. 4, p. 122 : Sej. ' You, Pomponius, hold 
some good correspondence with the Consul.' Marston, Malcon- 
tent 2. 2 : Malevole. ' Only let 's hold together a firm correspon- 
dence.' 

112. captaine Otter. Otter's title is of the sort characterized 
in W. is a Weathercock 1.2: 

Abra. a soldier, sir ? O God ! Ay, he is a captain. 

Strange. He may be so, and yet no soldier, sir ; 
For as many are soldiers, that are no captains. 
So many are captains, that are no soldiers. 

124. Pasiphae, &c. The frequent use of Latin phrase pJr story 
gives occasion to a quotation from Drake, Sh. and his TinySs, p. 219: 
' Everything was tinctured with ancient history and Diiythology. — 
When the queen paraded through a country town,/ almost every 
pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit' at the house of 
any of her nobility, at entering the hall she w?is saluted by the 
Penates, and conducted to her privy-chamber t/>y Mercury. Even 
the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner select 
transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses we-re exhibited in con- 
fectionary : and the splendid iceing of an irriniense historic plum- 

O 2 



204 ^^^ Silent Woman [act iii 

cake was embossed with a delicious basso-relievo of the destruction 
of Troy.' So Otter's suggestion that the Bear Garden be decorated 
with the subjects of Clerimont's stories is ludicrous for more than 
one reason. 

128. that I could ha' said as much. In the age when men 
consciously endeavoured to be wits, envy of another's quickness 
of thought became one of the subjects of satire. Cf. Littlewit's 
jealousy of Winwife in Bar. Fair i. i, p. 358: 'Good, i' faith ! 
now dulness upon me, that I had not that aiore him, that I could 
not light on't as well as he ! ' 

Act III. Scene II 1 1. 

1. brace of angels. The appearance of this word, abbre- 
viated from the coin's full designation, the angel-noble, is generally 
the signal for a pun. Tale of a Tub i. 3, p. 137 : 

Pre. There are a brace of angels to support you. 

3-4. thanke fortune, double to nature. Thank chance twice 
for a good result where you thank a reasonable cause but once. 

10. catches with, cloth-workers. Cloth- workers came to 
England from various foreign countries : the Protestant woolen- 
weavers from the Netherlands, 4,000 of them, to Sandwich, Nor- 
wicii, and Norfolk in 156 1-5 ; weavers of silk chiefly from France. 
In London the cloth-workers made up the twelfth of the twelve 
great liveried companies or guilds. That weavers were noted for 
their singing is held by Thomas Ratcliffe in an interesting note in 
Notes and Queries, loth Series, 2. 194, and is supported by such 
1 '-•'=; fe re nces as those in i Hen. IV 2. 4. 145: Fals. 'I would 
I wei -e a weaver ; I could sing psalms or anything.' Twelfth Night 
2. 3- S^'^. : ' Shall we rouse the night-owl in a catch, that will draw 
three souls out of one weaver ?' 

23. cough out the rest. This vulgarism, still occasionally 
heard, I find us\(^(j again in a letter concerning the Princess Eliza- 
beth from Sir Ro^?^ert Tyrwhit to the Lord Protector : ' If your Grace 
did know all my toersuasion with her, — your Grace would not a 
little marvel that sht,^ ^^u ^q mote cough out matter than she doth.' 

31. a waterman,^_ 'phg rowers of the Thames barges were 
notoriously loud of t^j^gue and rough of speech. Sitting on the 
river-stairs they dispui-gd for passengers, and, the journey done. 



sc. iiii] Notes 205 

they wrangled about their fees. Their shouts to draw custom to 
their particular boat were unceasing. Their cries gave names to 
the comedies Northward Ho, Eastward Ho, Westward Ho, and 
Oars or Sculls. Dekker, Deuils Answer to Pierce Penny lesse, 
Pr. Wks. 2. 117, claims that at the Thames you are 'bayted by 
whole kennels of yelping watermen ... at Westminster bridge, 
and ready to be torne to peeces to haue two pence towed out of 
your purse '. Overbury, Characters, A Waterman, ' He keeps such 
a bawling at Westminster, that if the lawyers were not acquainted 
with it an order would be taken with him ' ; cf. also the lines 
devoted to him in Turner's Dish of Stuff, and Bar. Fair 5. 3, 
where the puppet play is a satire on watermen. Besant, London 
368, estimates that in 1603 there were 2,000 boats and 3,000 
boatmen on the river. There is knowledge to be gained of them 
through their poetic brother, John Taylor ' the Water Poet,' who 
published his poems in 1633. 

38. a motion . . . one of the French puppets. Strutt, 
Sports and Past., p. 143, speaks thus of the introduction of mario- 
nettes : ' It is highly probable, that necessity suggested to him (the 
tragitour) the idea of supplying the place of his human con- 
federates by automaton figures made of wood, which, by means of 
wires properly attached to them, were moved about, and performed 
many of the actions peculiar to mankind ; and, with the assistance 
of speeches made for them behind the scenery, produced that 
species of drama commonly distinguished by the appellation of 
a droll, or a puppet-play; wherein a facetious performer, well 
known by the name of Punchinello, supplied the place of the Vice, 
or mirth maker, a favorite character of the moralities.' The best 
account of the motions and allied entertainments is Chambers's 
Mediaeval Stage, 2. 149 ff. In Fleet Street the motions might 
always be found, but at the fairs were collected the greatest 
numbers. Their subjects can be seen from the following: Every 
Man Out 2. i, p. 64 : ' They say, there's a new motion of the city 
of Ninevah, with Jonas and the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge.' 
Marston, Dutch Courtezan 3. i : 

Beat. A motion, sister. 

Crisp. Ninevah, Julius Caesar, Jonas, or the destruction of 
Jerusalem. 

39-40. innocent out of the hospitall. As illustrating the use 



2o6 The Silent Woman [act hi 

of this word for ' idiot ' W. copied from a parish church register, 
'Thomas Sole, an innocent, about the age of fifty years and 
upward, buried 19th September, 1605 '. But the word is frequent 
in old plays. Field, Aviendsfor Ladies i. i, Haz.-Dods. 9. 102 : 

Fee. When I was a child, an infant, an innocent — 
Maid, (aside) 'Twas even now. 

Interlude 0/ the Four Elements, Haz.-Dods. i. 42 : 

Nay, God forbid ye should do so. 
For he is but an innocent 
In manner of a fole. 

Lear 3.6.9 {addressing the fool) : 

Edg. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend. 

41. a playse mouth: i.e. twisted. Dekker, 2 Honest Whore 
2. I : ' I should have made a wry mouth at the world like a playse.' 
Nashe, Lenten Stuff: ' None woone the day but the Herring, whom 
all their clamorous suffrages saluted Vive le Roy, save only the 
playse and the butte, that made wry mouthes at him, and for their 
mocking have wry mouths ever since.' Nares gives an example 
from T. Lodge, Beloe's Anecdotes 2. 115 : 

This makes Amphidius welcome to good cheer 

And spend his master fortie pounde a yeere. 

And keep his plaise-mouth'd wife in welts and gardes. 

54. coaeted. C. quotes an example of this harsh and unusual 
word, Fabyan, vol. i, ch. 140: 'But that was to theyr harme, for 
they lost the feeld, and were coaeted to flee.' 



Act III. Scene V. 

1 0. tlie owle. For some centuries the belief that the owl and 
raven mean bad luck to the beholder has been a popular super- 
stition. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 3. 206, discusses the ill-omened owl. 
Chaucer, Asse^nbly of Foules 235 : 

The jelous swan, ayenst his deth that singeth, 
The owle eke, that of deth the bode bringeth. 

Spenser, Faerie Queene i. 9. 33. 6: 

On top whereof aye dwelt the ghastly owle, 
Shrieking his baleful note. 



sc. v] Notes 207 

Com. of Err. 2. 2. 192 : 

We talk with goblins, owls and sprites; 

If we obey them not, this will ensue, 

They'll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. 

Rich. Ill \. 4. 509: 

Rich, Out on you, owls ! nothing but songs of death ? 
16. night-crow. Another much feared bird; cf. Brand, ibid. 
3. 211 ff. 3 Hen. F/5. 6. 45: 

The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time. 

Marston, 2 Antonio and Mellida i. i : 

'Tis yet dead night . . . 

No spirit moves upon the breast of earth. 

Save howling dogs, night crows, and screeching ovvles. 

Save meagre ghosts, Piero, and black thoughts. 

C. calls attention to Newman's Night-Crow ; a Bird that breedeth 
Brawles in many Families and Householdes, &c. (1590). 

24-5. the conduit or the bake-house, or the infant'ry 
that follow the court. These exemplify places where crowds of 
people, often low enough company, might be found. In S. of 
Nevus 3. 2, p. 246, the gossips criticize the legalized news: 

Tat. I have better news from the bakehouse, by ten thou- 
sand parts, in a morning ; or the conduits in Westminster. 

Massinger, Parliament of Love 4. 5 : 

Live to be wretched ; live to be the talk 
Of the conduit and the bakehouse. 

Traill, Sac. Eng. 3. 575, writes of the first of these news centers: 
'Familiar sights in London streets were the conduits of water 
flowing at the junction of thoroughfares, the water carriers or "cobs" 
with their casks of water, selling to those who preferred not to go 
to the conduit for it.' There was the oft-mentioned Great Conduit 
in Cheap near its junction with the Poultry; the Little Conduit 
at the West End facing Foster Lane and the Old 'Change. 
G. explains that the infantry were the lower order of servants and 
followers necessary to the court train, described by Webster in the 
White Devil, vol. 2. 160: 'A lousy knave, that within this twenty 
years rode with the black-guard in the duke's carriages, amongst 
spits and dripping pans.' Further reference to the conduits may 
be found in Stow, Survey i. 49, and in Rye, Eng. as seen by 



2o8 The Silent Woman [act hi 

Foreigners (ed. 1865), p, 8. The news centers at the conduits 
were to soon disappear, for in the year Epiccene was written the 
New River for the supply of water was begun, May 1609, and 
opened Michaelmas day 16 13 by Hugh Myddleton, a private citizen 
and goldsmith. 

27. lippis & tonsoribus notum. Horace, Sat. i. 7. 3: 'Omni- 
bus et lippis notum et tonsoribus esse' — to be known to everybody, 
to all the world. 

33. my eaters? my mouthes. The list of epithets heaped 
upon servants seems as long as the sorts of ill treatment to which 
they were subject. Especially are they scored for great appetite 
and little industry, as in the case of runaway Launcelot, Mer. of 
Ven. 2. 5 : 

Shy. Thou shalt not gormandise, 

As thou hast done with me: — what, Jessica! — 
And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out. 

Every Man Out 5. i, p. 159 : Punt. ' I, like a dull beast, forgot to 
bring one of my cormorants to attend me.' 
Lear 2. 2. 14: 

Osw. What dost thou know me for? 

Kent. A knave ; a rascal ; an eater of broken meats ; a base, 
proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, 
worsted-stocking knave. 

Ant. and Chop. 3. 13. 106: 

Ha! 
Have I my pillow left unpress'd in Rome, 
Forborne the getting of a lawful race, 
And by a gem of women, to be abused 
By one that looks on feeders? 

Other similar names for servants are in Davenant, The Wits 3. i : 
' Tall eaters in blue coats ; ' Fletcher, Nice Valour 3.1:' Servants he 
has, lusty tall feeders.' Even Simion Eyre in Dekker's Shoemaker s 
Holiday calls his men in like terms : ' Where be these cannibals, 
these varlets, my officers ? ' Massinger, New Way to Pay Old Debts 1.3: 
Why you slaves. 
Created only to make legs and cringe. 
To carry in a dish and shift a trencher. 
That have not souls, only to hope a blessing, 
Beyond black jacks or flagons. You that were born 
Only, to consume meat, and drink and fatten 
Upon reversions. 



sc. v] Notes 209 

48. humor, and silence of the night. Humor may have 
been suggested by the word used in the source, Libanius, ' media 
et intempesta nox'. Jonson gives night the same designation in 
The Vision of Delight, vol. 7. 284: 

Delight. Our sports are of the humorous Night, 
Who feeds the stars that give her light. 

And Spenser, Faerie Queene i. i. 36: 

The drouping night thus creepeth on them fast 
And the sad humour loading their eye liddes, . . . 
Sweet slumbering deaw, 

49-50. iollities of feast, of musique, of reuells. Brand, 
Pop. Aniiq. 2. 133-41, describes the various ceremonies customary 
at a wedding. The service was generally performed in the church ; 
the party came home with music, feasted in a house decorated with 
flowers and draperies, and danced, or, if the family were noble, preceded 
the dance with a masque. Jonson suggests some of these details 
Epiccene 3. 6. Strutt, Manners and Customs i. 76, concludes that 
after the feast ' the remaining part of the day was spent by the 
youth of both sexes in mirth and dancing, while the graver sort sat 
down to the drinking bout in which they highly dehghted'. 

51. your Hymen. Hymen or Hymenaeus, the Greek god of 
marriage, came in Elizabeth's time to have the meaning here 
given the word, ' marriage ' or * wedding ', a meaning which is now 
very rare. 

62. citterne. An instrument of this kind was in every barber's 
shop. Larwood and Hotten, History 0/ Signboards, p. 343, quote 
from Tom Brown in his Amusements for the Meridian of London'. 
' A cittern and a barber is as natural as milk to a calf or the bears 
to be attended by a Bagpiper.' The cittern is also mentioned 
by Ned Ward : ' I would sooner hear an old barber ring Whit- 
tingtons Bells upon a cittern.' G. refers to the following. 
Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough 3. 3: 'I gave that barber a fustian 
suit, and twice redeemed his cittern.' Dekker, 2 Honest Whore, 
5. 2 : 'A barber's cittern for every serving-man to play upon.' 
And in Defence of the Female Sex, the writer observes of a virtuoso, 
that ' his inventory can be no more compleat without two or three 
remarkable signatures, than an apothecary's shop without a tortoise 
and a crocodile, or a barber's without a battered cittern.' Cf. also 
'Kxn^h.i, London i. 142. 



2IO The Silent Woman [act hi 

64. Egypts ten plagues. Cf. Exodus 7 ff. 

68. get the poxe with seeking to cure it. The French 
pox, Morbus Gallictis, called in England simply ' the pox '. Cf. 
Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain i. 414 ff. Cutbeard's 
interest is explained by the scene at the barber's in Beaum. 
and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle 4. 4 ; or Hall, 
Virgidemiarum 4. i. 162. In the time of Henry VIII, 320, c. 42 
(1540), the barber and surgeon was distinguished from the 
physician ; the barber's sphere of activity was limited to minor 
cases like blood-letting, and to such work as a dentist now does ; 
physicians were at the same time prohibited from 'barbery' or 
shaving. Henry VIII founded the ' Faculty of Physic at Oxford 
and Cambridge, and the College of Physicians in London'. Cf. 
Traill, Social Eng. 3. 151. Earle, Micro-C. no. 42 : 'A Surgeon 
differs from a Physitian as a sore do's from a disease, or the sicke 
from those that are whole, the one distempers you within, the other 
blisters you without.' Barbers were finally separated into distinct 
corporations by George II in 1745. 

70. lock. The fantastic hair-dressing indulged in by the 
fashionable men of the time is inveighed against by Dekker, 
Guls Horn-Booke, ch. 3 ; by Stubbes, Anat. of Ab., esp. part 2. 50 ; 
by Prynne, Unlovliness of Love-locks ; and by Hall, On the Loath- 
someness of long Hair. Shakespeare, through Brabantio, 0th. 
I. 2. 68, speaks of ' The wealthy curled darlings of our nation', 
and the First Watchman in Much Ado 3. 3. 182 : ' One deformed 
is one of them : I know him ; 'a wears a lock.' Davenant, Love 
and Honour 2. i : 'A lock on the left side, so rarely hung with 
ribanding; ' and Lyly, My das 3. 2 : ' How will you be trimmed, sir?, 
Will you have your beard Hke a spade, or a bodkin? A pent- 
house on your upper Hp, or an alley on your chin? A low curie 
on your heade like a ball, or dangling locks like a spaniell? 
Your mustachoes sharp at the ends Hke shoemakers aules, or 
hanging downe to your mouth like goates flakes? Your love- 
locks wreathed with a silken twist, or shaggie to fall on your 
shoulders ? ' 

73. shop. Scott's Fortunes of Nigel, ch. 21, has a description 
of the shop of Benjamin Suddlechop, the Fleet Street barber, 
which is excellent in its detail. 

75. balles. Soap seems only to have been molded into this 



sc. v] Notes 211 

shape. Mag. Lady 2. i, p. 48: Boy. 'A half-witted barbarian, 
which no barber's art, or his balls, will ever expunge or take out.' 
Gyp. Meiamor., vol. 7. 406 : 

An ointment . . . yet without spells, 
By a mere barber, and no magic else, 
It was fetch'd off with water and a ball. 

Marston, Dutch Courtezan 3. 3 : Cocledemoy. ' A ball to scour — 
a scouring ball — a ball to be shaved ! ' He uses this as a vender's 
cry when in disguise. Dekker, Seuen Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. i. 
62, addresses: 'O you that bandie away none but sweete washing 
Balles, and cast none other then Rose-waters for any mans pleasure.' 
Stubbes enters them among the Abuses, part 2. 50, not because 
they made for cleanliness, surely, but because they were perfumed: 
' Then shall your mouth be bossed with lather, or fome that riseth 
of the balles (for they haue their sweete balles wherewith-all they 
vse to washe) ; your eyes closed must be anointed therewith also. 
Then snap go the fingers, ful brauely, got wot.' 

84. earning lanternes in paper. Cheap lanterns were made 
of paper rather than horn. In The Ordinary i. 2, Haz.-Dods. 12. 
220, Slicker likens Poduck's face to * an oil'd paper-lantern'. 
Selden, Table Talk, under Religion, p. 104 : ' Religion is made 
a Juggler's Paper ; now 'tis a Horse, now 'tis a Lanthorn, now 'tis 
a boar, now 'tis a man. To serue Ends Religion is turn'd into 
all Shapes.' 

85. no baud carted. ... to employ a bason of his. When 
bawds and other infamous persons were carted, it was usual for 
a mob to precede them, beating metal basins, pots, and other 
sounding vessels, to increase the tumult, and call the spectators 
together. So Bar. Fair 4. 3, p. 465 : 

Urs. You know where you were taw'd lately ; both lash'd and 
slash'd you were in Bridewell. 

Alice. Ay, by the same token you rid that week, and broke 
out the bottom of the cart. 

Cf. New Inn 4. 3, p. 384; Stow, Survey 5. 317. 

90. Eat eare-waxe. Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 361, explains that 
* It was formerly part of a barber's occupation to pick the teeth 
and ears. So in the old play of Herod and Antipater, 1622, 
Tryphon the barber enters with a case of instruments, to each of 
which he addresses himself separately : 



212 The Silent Woman [act hi 

Toothpick, dear toothpick ; earpick, both of you 
Have been her sweet companions ! ' 

I'll helpe you. True-wit is ready to aid Morose in devising 
imaginary punishments for the tell-tale barber. The same self- 
conscious putting of wits together for the pleasure of inventing 
abuse occurs in Volp. i, r, p. 192, when Mosca is deriding 
Volpone to Corvino, and his images become exhausted : ' Nay, 
help, sir!' and Corvino complies; also Alchem. i. i, p. 21 : 'Your 
Sol, and Luna, — Help me.' 

90-1. draw his owne teeth. Together with the occupations 
of shaver, hair-dresser, and surgeon already mentioned, the barber 
combined that of dentist. Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle- Light, 
Pr. Wks. 3. 273: 'Some of the Horse-hunters, are as nimble 
Knaues in finding out the infirmities of a lade, as a Barber is in 
drawing of teeth.' 

99. a rag left him, to set vp with. In his work as a 
letter of blood the barber had need of such paraphernalia. Brand, 
Pop. Antiq. 2. 359, quotes from Gay, Fables i. 22, The Goat 
without a Beard : 

His pole with pewter basins hung, 
Black rotten teeth in order strung, 
Rang'd cups that in the window stood, 
Lin'd with red rags to look like blood, 
Did well his three fold trade explain. 
Who shav'd, drew teeth, and breath'd a vein. 

105. new-paint his pole. The significance of the barber's 
pole, still so common a sign in our own day, has been much 
discussed. I subjoin the account of Larwood and Hotten, History 
of Signboards, and that of Brand, Pop. Atitiq. The former, p. 341, 
write : ' The barber's pole . . . dates from the time when barbers 
practiced phlebotomy : the patient undergoing this operation had 
to grasp the pole in order to make the blood flow more freely. 
This use of the pole is illustrated in more than one illuminated 
MS. As the pole was of course liable to be stained with blood, 
it was painted red : when not in use, barbers were in the habit 
of suspending it outside the door with the white linen swathing- 
bands twisted around it ; this in latter times gave rise to the pole 
being painted red and white, or black and white, or even with 
red, white, and blue lines winding around it. It was stated by 



sc. v] Notes 213 

Lord Thurlow in the House of Peers, July 17, 1797, when he 
opposed the Surgeon's Incorporation Bill, that by a statute still 
in force the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole, the 
barbers were to have theirs blue and white striped, with no other 
appendage ; but the surgeons . . . were to have a gallipot and a red 
flag in addition, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.' 
Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 359: 'The barber's pole has been the 
subject of many conjectures, some conceiving it to have originated 
from the word poll or head, with several other conceits as far- 
fetched and as unmeaning; but the true interpretation of that 
parti-coloured staff was to show that the master of the shop 
practiced surgery, and could breathe a vein as well as mow a beard. 
Such a staff being to this day, by every village practitioner, put 
into the hand of a patient undergoing the operation of phlebotomy. 
The white band, which encompasses the staff, was meant to 
represent the fillet thus elegantly twined about it. ... That this 
is a very ancient practise, appears from an illumination in a 
missal of the time of Edward the First in the possession of 
Mr. Wild.' 

116. a colliers throat. True-wit implies that it would be 
degrading to hang for killing so insignificant and rascally a person 
as a collier. Dekker, Seuen Deadly Sinnes, has Lying enter the 
city unseen among 'Colliers with carts most sinfully leaden'. 
Greene, Quippe/or an Vpstart Courtier, Wks. 11. 259, shows their 
notorious knavery: 'Though I am blacke I am not the Diuell, 
but indeed a Colier of Croiden, and one sir that haue sold many 
a false sack of coales, that both wanted measure and was halfe 
full of dust and drosse.' And further, in his Art 0/ Conny-catching, 
Wks. 10. 51 ff., there is a Pleasant Discouery of the coosenage of 
Colliers ; cf. the comedy, Grimm, Collier of Croyden, Haz.-Dods. 
II. Sir Toby's application of the word to the devil shows how 
undesirable a soubriquet it had become, Tivelfth Night 3. 4. 130: 
* Hang thee, foul collier ! ' — which, by the way, is the very direcdon 
that enraged Face shouts at Subtle, Alchem. i. i, p. 16. 

117. chance-medlee. It would seem that Jonson had fallen 
into the error pointed out by TV. E. D. of using this word for 
' pure chance ' rather than in the legal meaning of ' the casual 
killing of a man, not altogether without the killer's fault, though 
without an evil intent.' Cf. Every Man Out 3. 2, p. 12. 



214 ^^^ Silent Woman [act hi 

Act III. Scene VI. 

28. Complement. Of this oft-used word Jonson says, Disc. 
142, vol. 9. 209: 'You are not to cast a ring for the perfumed 
terms of the time, as acco?nmodation, complement, spirit, &c., but 
use them properly in their place, as others.' Cf. note, complement, 

I. I. 136. 

41. absolute behauiour. Absolute is seldom found in the 
sense of 'perfect' now. Cf. Hen. F3. 7. 27 : 'Indeed, my lord, 
it is a most absolute and excellent horse.' M. W. of W. 3. 3. 66 : 
' Thou wouldst make an absolute courtier.' Coriol. 4. 5. 143 : 

AuF. Therefore, most absolute sir, . . . take 
The one half of my commission. 

Two Noble Kinsmen 2.1:' They are famed to be a pair of absolute 
men.' Meas. for Meas. 5. i. 44: 'As shy, as grave, as just, as 
absolute.' Marston, What you Will 4. i : Malez. ' O, but your 
servant Quadratus, the absolute courtier.' Lyly, Cavipaspe 3. 3 : 
Apelles. ' It were pitie but that so absolute a face should furnish 
Venus temple amongst these pictures.' 

55-6. set vp a side : i. e. to become partners in a game of 
cards. 

68. gloues. It is a very old custom in England to give gloves 
to the wedding-guests. Beck, Gloves, their Annals and Associa- 
tions, London, 1883, pp. 235-8, says they were sent also to absent 
friends interested in the wedding, a point supported by such 
incidents as that 'n Field, Amends for Ladies i. i, Haz.-Dods. 

II. 106 : Sel. 'I am come from Master Ingen this morning, who, 
is married, or to be married ; and though your ladyship did not 
honour his nuptials with your presence, he hath by me sent each 
of you a pair of gloves.' Cf. Bar. Fair 3. i, p. 424 : 'And my 
wedding gloves too ! that I never thought on afore. All my 
wedding gloves, gingerbread? O me! what a device there will 
be to make 'em eat their fingers' ends ! ' It was a fine device, 
seeing that the usual wedding glove was a fancy aff'air of leather, 
silk, or worsted, perfumed and laboriously embroidered. Beaum. 
and Fletch. Scornful Lady i . i : 

If my wedding-smock were on, 
Were the gloves bought and given, the licence come, 
Were the rosemary branches dipt, and all 
The hippocras and cakes eat and drunk off. 



SC. vi] Notes 215 

Herrick, Hesperides 617 : 

What posies for our wedding rings, 
What gloves we'll give, and ribbanings. 

73. where be our skarfes. Brand, 2. no, speaks of the 
custom of giving favors, fancy ribbons, or scarfs, as are found in 
the Collier's Wedding : 

The blithesome, bucksome country maids, 
With knots of ribands at their heads, 
And pinners flutt'ring in the wind, 
That fan before and toss behind. 
Like streamers in the painted sky, 
At every breast the favours fly. 

75. brides colours. It was the custom for bride and groom 
to have their particular color of ribbon, which their respective 
friends wore in their honor. So Chamberlain writes (quoted by 
C, vol. 7. 443) on the 5th of January, 1613-14: 'On the New 
Year's day was the Tiltings of ten against ten. The bases, 
trappings, and all other furniture of the one party was murrey and 
white, which were the Bride's colours ; the other green and yellow 
for the bride-groom.' Jonson satirizes this in the Tale of a Tub 
I. 2, p. 134, when Turfe, whose daughter is to marry John Clay, 
remarks : ' Son John shall bid welcome all, this day ; we'll zerve 
under his colours.' And the general use of colors is the subject 
of a lengthy satiric treatment in Cyn. Rev. 5. 2. 307 ff. Brand, 2. 
Ill, quotes from the Fifteen Comforts of Marriage, concerning the 
colors used by brides with regard to their due significance : ' For 
the favours-blue (truth), red (justice), peach-colour and orange- 
tawny. For the young ladies' top-knots flame-colour, straw-colour 
(plenty), peach-colour, grass-green (youthful jollity), and milk-white. 
For the garters, a perfect yellow, signifying honour and joy.' 

82-3. biggen, to the night-cap. A biggen as here used was 
the cap an infant wore, just as the night-cap was worn by men of 
years ; but ' biggin ' stands for the profession of law in Mayne, City 
Match : 

One, whom the good old man, his uncle, 
Kept to the Inns of Court, and would in time 
Have made him barrister, and raised him to 
The satin cap and biggin. 

Volp. 5. 5, p. 306, Mosca's advice to the advocate Voltore is to 



2i6 The Silent Woman [act hi 

* get you a biggin more '. And Pierce Penilesss Supplication to the 
Deuil (1592) : ' Vpon his head he wore a coarse biggin, and next 
it a garnish of night-caps, with a sage button cap ' is said of the 
usurer. It is distinctly a child's cap in The Masque of Christmas, 
vol. 7, 261: 'Baby-cake, drest like a boy, in a fine long coat, 
biggin, bib, muskender, and a little dagger.' 

91-2. no garters? ... no epithalamium ? no masque? 
Brand, 2. 127, writes that it was from early times a custom at 
weddings for the young men to strive (immediately after the 
ceremony) to gain possession of the bride's garters. ' This was 
sometimes done before the very altar. The bride was gartered 
with ribbons for the occasion.' Another custom, as crude and 
generally coupled with that of the garters, was the endeavor to possess 
themselves of the groom's points. So Brooke, Epithalamium, in 
England's Helicon : 

Youths, take his poynts, your wonted rights; 
And maydens, take your due, her garters, 

Herrick, Hesperides 284 : 

Quickly, quickly then prepare, 
And let the young men and the bride-maids share 

Your garters; and their joyntts 
Encircle with the bride grom's points. 

Formal marriage songs were fashionable among the nobility of 
Jonson's day ; cf. Spenser's beautiful poem and those Jonson wrote 
in connection with his masques. He says of his own in Masque of 
Hymen, vol. 7. 65 : 'I made it both in form and matter to emulate 
that kind of poem, which was called Epithalamium, and by the 
ancients used to be sung when the bride was led into her chamber.' 
Concerning masques we only quote, in addition to what has been 
said, a few words from the indispensable Brand, who says, 2. i6i : 
'Among the higher ranks there was ... a wedding-sermon, an 
epithalamium, and at night a masque.' 

102. diuerted vpon mee. A construction very unusual, made 
probably with the Latin in mind, diver tere, to turn away or aside. 

107. a rude groome. Centaure, taking advantage of the 
meaning of ' servant ', which also belongs to groom, makes a pun. 

108-9. to be grafted, and haue your homes, &c. Concern- 
ing the origin and history of the idea of ' horning ' a husband by 
proving unfaithful to him, N. E. D. has the best account, finding 



sc. vi] Notes 217 

it common to many languages and as old as classic Greek. There 
are other conjectures, one of a whimsical nature, in Notes and 
Queries, 6th Series, vol. 10. Shakespeare has a fantastic explana- 
tion of the ram's horns falling into the Emperor's court, Tii. 
Andron. 4. 3. 70 ff., and a detailed joke on horn-book and horn, 
L. L. L. 5. I. 69 ff. Brand has collected a quantity of material 
on this subject, and it may be found in the Pop. Aniiq. 2. 181-202, 
under Cornutes. 

114-15. in a very sad cup. Wine was necessary at a bridal, 
a bride-cup being often drunk at the altar itself. Compleat Vintner 
(1720), quoted by Brand, 2. 137 : 

What priest can join two lovers' hands. 
But wine must seal the marriage-bands? 
As if celestial wine was thought 
Essential to the sacred knot, 
And that each bridegroom and his bride 
Believ'd they were not firmly ty'd 
Till Bacchus, with his bleeding tun. 
Had finished what the priest begun. 
New Inn 5. i, p. 404 : 

Lord B. Get our bed ready, chamberlain, 
And host, a bride-cup. 

115. Goe too. Schmidt calls this 'a phrase of exhortation or 
reproof. Jonson uses it again, 3. i. 57, but it is far less often in 
the mouths of his characters than in those of Shakespeare. 
Tempest 5. 297; Two G. of Ver. 2. i. 13; M. W. ofW. i. 4. 165, 
2. 2. 159, &c. 

Act III. Scene VII. 

2. varietie of noyses. Groups of different sorts of players, 
fiddlers, and trumpeters. This wedding seems not to have been 
noisier than others of the common people. Christian State of 
Matrimony (1543), p. 48: 'They came with a great noise of 
harpers, lutes, kytles, basen, and drommes, wherwyth they trouble 
the whole church, and hyndre them in matters pertayning to God.' 
Puttenham, Arte of English Poesie (1589), p. 69, writes of 'blind 
harpers, or such like tauern minstrels that giue a fit of mirth for 
a groat, and their matters being for the most part stories of old 
time, as the Tale of Sir Topas, the Reportes of Beuis of Southamp- 

P 



2i8 The Silent Woman [act hi, sc. vii 

ton . . . made purposely for recreation of the common people at 
Christmas dinner, and bride-ales '. 

18-19. wedding dinner. To preserve La-Foole's dignity it 
should be explained that his bringing in a banquet was not an act 
unprecedented, for Harrison, in his Description of England, explains : 
' In feasting, also, the husbandmen do exceed after this manner, 
especially at bridales . . . where it is incredible to tell what meat is 
consumed and spent ; ech one brings such a dish, or so manie, 
with him, as his wife and he doo consult vpon, but, alwaies with 
this consideration, that the leefe friend shall haue the better 
prouision '. Tale of a Tub, Dame Turfe insists that the dinner 
must be eaten to music, and Clench upholds her : 

She is in the right, sir ; vor your wedding dinner 
Is starv'd without the music. 

33. How like you her wit. So Fastidious, anxious for the 
reputed wit of Saviolina, asks Macilente in Every Man Out 3. 3, 
p. 120: 'How like you her wit?' And Macilente answers, less 
affectedly, but hardly more sincerely than Mavis : ' Her ingenuity 
is excellent, sir.' 

34, prettily ... well. In present-day English an adv. of manner 
cannot modify other adv.; cf. Cyn. Rev. i. i, p. 228: 'Indeed, 
I think, next a traveller, he does prettily well.' Bar. Fair 3. i, 
p. 421 : 'I like that device of your smiths, very pretty well.' ^S". of 
News 2. I, p. 211: Pen. Can. 'They pass the compliment 
prettily well.' 

42. Heralds. The heralds at arms, the royal trumpeters. 
6". of News I. 2, p. 182 : 

Pen. Jr. I should have made shift 
To have laugh'd as heartily in my mourner's hood, 
As in this suit, if it had pleas'd my father 
To have been buried with the trumpeters. 

Pick. The heralds at arms, you mean. 

Pen. Jr. I mean 
All noise that is superfluous ! 

The heralds at arms were originally the announcers of important 
news of any kind, and called the attention of the populace to 
themselves by blowing upon their horns. 



ACT iiii, sc. i] Notes 219 

Act iiii. Scene I. 

3-4. Chronicles of the land. The histories which began with 
Stow, Camden, Holinshed and others, had grown numerous 
enough to furnish many a jest for play-makers, Cf. Mayne, Cily 
Match I.I, where a thrust is made at Stow in : 

'Tis past the wit o' th' court of aldermen, 
Next merchant-tailor, that writes chronicles, 
Will put us in. 

9. neesing. This old form is familiar in Job 41. 18 : ' By his 
neesings a light doth shine ', as is said of the Leviathan. Dekker, 
Lanthorne and Candle- Light, Pr. Wks. 3. 277, uses it of a horse : 
' At length, with a little neezing more, his nose will be cleaner then 
his Maisters the Horse-courser ! ' dauneing. Early in the 

sixteenth century the English gained a reputation for being ex- 
cellent dancers. Strutt, Sports and Past. 174 ff., discusses the sub- 
ject, and its place in all holiday functions taken part in by nobility, 
the middle classes, and their inferiors, quoting from The Four 
Elevients the accusation that the people at large love ' pryncypally 
disportes, as daunsynge, syngynge, toys, tryfuls, laughynge, and 
gestynge'. The most abusive words in Stubbes's denunciatory 
vocabulary are expended against dancing, pp. 156 ff. Burton dis- 
cusses it Anat. of Mel., pp. 541-2. Shakespeare refers often, but 
briefly, as in Twelfth Night i. 3. 136, and Hen. F3. 5. 32, to 
lavoltas, galliards, corantos. And Marston, Malcontent 4.1:' Les 
quanto, lady, Pensez-bien, Pas-a-regis, or Bianca^s hrawl ?'' To 
which question Aur. answers, ' We have forgot the brawl '. 
Selden, Table Talk, p. 62 : ' The Court oi England \s, much alter'd. 
At a solemn Dancing, first you had the grave Measures, then the 
Corantoes and the Galliards, and this is kept up with Ceremony, 
at length to Prench-more, and the Cushion-Dance, and then all 
the company Dance, Lord and Groom, Lady and Kitchen-Maid, 
no distinction. So in our Court in Queen Elizabeth's time Gravity 
and State were kept up. In King fames' s time things were pretty 
well. But in King Charles's time, there has been nothing but 
French-More and the Cushion-Dance, omnium gatherum, tolly, polly, 
hoite come loite.' The brawl (Fr. braule) was done by several 
persons holding hands in a circle ; ihepavin was slow and grave; 

P 2 



220 The Silent Woman [act mi 

the dignified measure formed part of the Revels of the Inns of 
Court ; the Canary was a sprightly and popular dance, so coran- 
toes, lavoltas, jigs, and galliards. There is an old book of 1 588 
on dancing — Arbeau, Orcheseographie. 

11. furie. Cf. also 4. 2. 80. The application of the name of 
the Eumenides to an angry or malignant woman appears as early 
as Chaucer, Troil. and Cress. 1488. It is common in Jonson's 
time, Beaum. and Fletch. Philaster 2.4: 

Come sir, 
You put me in a woman's madness, the glory of a fury. 

20. I shall goe away i' the iest else. ' I shall die laughing.' 

21. nest of night-caps. This word seems at times to mean 
a series of articles of diminishing sizes, and at times to mean 
simply ' a collection'. Cf. Marston, Dutch Courtezan i. i : ' Cog- 
ging Cocledemoy is runne away with a neast of goblets.' Dekker, 
2 Honest Whore i. 3, Lodovico asks in allusion to the traders' 
caps : ' Carolo, didst e'er see such a nest of caps ? ' Bar. Fair, 
Induct, p. 349 : ' If there be never a servant-monster in the fair, 
who can help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques ?' Ibid. 4. 4, 
p. 472 : 'I have a nest of beards in my trunk.' 

24-5. like him o' the sadlers horse in Fleet street. I find 
no description of the saddler's sign. 2 Hen. IV 2. 4. 270, Falstaflf 
laughs at Poins because ' he wears his boots very smooth, like 
unto the sign of the leg ', and somehow the boots are suggestive 
of a saddler's sign, though ' the sign of the leg ' was the prerogative 
of every hosier. 

34. come about to thee: 'to side with'. So Cat. 2. i, 
p. 228 : 

Cur. You will repent these moods, and ere 't be long too, 
I shall have you come about again. 

Ibid. 4. 4, p. 294, Sanga says of the Allobroges : 'They're come 
about, and won to the true side '. 

39. if shee be short. This ridiculous advice from Ovid is 
repeated in Marston, Dutch Courtezan 3. i : Crispinella insists, 
' Nay, good, let me still sit ; we low statures love still to sit, lest 
when we stand we may be supposed to sit '. Cf. the conversation 
between Speed and Launce, Two G. of Ver. 3. 2. 

43. carue the lesse, and act in gloues. Act must mean. 



sc. i] Notes 221 

'gesticulate', for the source, Ars Amatoria 3. 275 reads: ' Exiguo 
signet gestu quodcunque loquetur.' It was usual for women to 
carve at table. Z>. -(4. 2. 3, p. 70, Engine praises Dick Robinson 
who impersonates a woman ; 

But to see him behave it. 
And lay the law, and carve, and drink unto them, . . . 
It would have burst your buttons, or not left you 
A seam. 

M. W. of W. I. 3. 50, Falstaff enumerates the virtues of Mrs. 
Ford : ' Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford's wife ; I spy 
entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she gives the leer 
of invitation.' 

44. discourse fasting. Fasting, unusual in its form, is sug- 
gested by the Latin word in the context of the source Ars Amatoria 
3. 2"]^, jejuna. Two G. of Ver. 3. i. 325 : * She is not to be kissed 
fasting.' 

51. I loue measure. So Shakespeare says, Much Ado 2. i. 
74 : ' There is a measure in everything.' And so the French early 
began to feel the force of this word, e.g. William de Palerne 619 : 
' Sous sens le grant et sa mesure.' 

56. leaue to Hue. Cf. Abbott, § 356, for the use of infinitive 
for gerundive. Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 237: Mercury. 'Nay Cupid, 
leave to speak improperly.' Ibid. Induct. : ' They could wish your 
poets would leave to be promoters of other men's jests.' Cat. 3. 
5, p. 268 : ' Leave to be mad.' D. A. 2. r, p. 50 : ' Bid him . . . 
leave to spread his nets in view.' 

57. Amadis de Gaule, or Don Quixote. The first of these 
is a long Spanish roman d'aventure of the illegitimate son of 
Periou, King of Gaul, and Elisena, princess of Brittany, which was 
translated into French by Herberay in 1540. In 1592 the first 
four or five books were translated into English from the French 
by Wolfe; later, through Anthony Munday's translations (1553- 
1633), Amadis of Gaule and the Palmerin family grew widely 
known. Saintsbury, French Literature, p. 236, says : ' The book 
became immensely popular. It is said that it was the usual read- 
ing book for foreign students of French . . . To no single book 
can be so clearly traced the heroic romances of the early seven- 
teenth century.' The first part only of Don Quixote had been 
printed at this time, coming out at Madrid in 1605. The second 



222 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

part followed in 1615. Shelton's famous translation appeared 
1612-20, Jonson couples these two knights of romance \x\.Alchem. 
4. 4, p. 146, when Kastril says to Surly : 

You are a pimp and a trig, 

And an Amadis de Gaule or a Don Quixote. 

He had little patience with the literature of romance, and writes 
in Underwoods, Execration upoti Vulcan, vol. 8. 400, that he would 
have expected vengeance from the fire-god : 

Had I compiled from Amadis de Gaul, 
The Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all 
The learned library of Don Quixote, 
And so some goodlier monster had begot. 

Burton, Anat. of Mel, p. 352 : ' Such . . . read nothing but play 
books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, 
the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux.' 
Drake, Sh. and his Times, quotes the advice of Moryson, Itinerary 
(16 1 7), in his directions to a traveler how to acquire languages: 
' I think no book better for his discourse than Amadis of Gaul ; for 
the knights errant, and the ladies of courts doe therein exchange 
courtly speeches, and these books are in all languages translated by 
the masters of eloquence.' 

58-9. where the matter is frequent, &c. At court were given 
many entertainments to which the public were asked — masques, 
baitings, &c. In Elizabeth's reign tilting was a gorgeous and 
spectacular court amusement. Nichols, Progresses, 2. 125, de- 
scribes one of the most splendid, lasting two days and given in 
honor of the French ambassadors who arrived in London April, 
1 58 1. The earl of Arundel wore engraved armor, with caparisons 
and horse furniture richly embroidered ; Lord Windsor wore gilt 
armor, master Philip Sidney blue and gilt; their followers in 
crimson and gold, orange and black. Twenty warriors fought at 
the entertainment given for Duke Montmorenci, chief Marshal of 
France, when he came to England to receive the Order of the 
Garter. And Nichols, ibid., 3. 41, relates how in 1590 Sir Henry 
Lee, the Queen's Champion, gave up his office in the tilt-yard to the 
Earl of Cumberland. But as no one below a squire could engage 
in a tournament, for the common people there were such games as 
tilting at the ring, quintain, or water quintain. Cf Strutt, Sports and 
Past., p. Ill ; Drake, Sh. and his Times, p. 269. Dekker devotes 



sc. i] Notes 223 

much space to criticizing the morals of public audiences, Guh 
Horn-Booke, Pr. Wks. 2. 249 : ' By sitting on the stage, if you be 
a knight, you may happily get you a Mistresse : if a meere Fleet- 
street Gentleman, a wife: but assure your-selfe, by continuall 
residence, you are the first and principall man in election to begin 
the number of we three! All of chap. 3 concerns play-house 
misbehavior; and again in Rauens Almanacke, Pr. Wks. 4. 191 ff. 
it is given attention. Swetnam, Arraignment of Women (1617): 
* If you meane to see the beare-baiting of women, then trudge to 
this Bear-Garden apace and get in betimes and view every room 
where thou mayst best sit for thy own pleasure.' Cf. Stubbes, Anat. 
of Ab., pp. 144 if., and Gossen, School of Abuse, Arber's Reprint, 
pp. 34 ff. Although Jonson takes this suggestion from Ovid, of 
making the church a rendezvous, it was singularly applicable to 
London in his day. The irreverent use to which St. Paul's was 
put between 1550 and 1650 is notorious; it was the common 
gossiping and business center for the ' wits and braveries ' about 
town (cf. Earle, Micro-C. no. 52, and Guls Horn-Booke, ch. 4). 
Dekker, ' Z^^wz'/i- Answer to Pierce Penny lesse, Pr. Wks. i. 115: 
' Churches stand like Rocks, to which very ffew approach, for feare 
of suffering ship-wrack.' As early as 1550 Bishop Hooper wrote. 
Later Writings (Parker Soc, p. 129): 'Item, that the church 
warderes do not permit any buying, selling, gaming, outrageous 
noises, tumult, or any other idle occupying of youth in the church, 
church porch, or church-yard, during the time of common prayer 
or reading of the homily.' Westward Ho 2. \,Dram. Wks. 2. 300 : 

Mrs. Honeysuckle. I'll come. The hour? 

JusTiNiANus. Two : the way through Paul's ; every wench take 
a pillar ; there clap on your masks : your men will be behind you ; 
and before your prayers are half done be before you, and man you 
out at severall doors. You'll be there.' Cf. ibid. 2. 2. 

66. droning a tobacco pipe. N. E. D. thinks that this 
expression for ' smoking ' comes from a ludicrous comparison of 
puffing smoke to playing on a bagpipe. Other phrases are as 
comic — ' to drink tobacco ', ' to take a whiff ', ' to breath tobacco ' ; 
but they are more common than this one, which occurs but in one 
other place, Every Man Out 4. 4, p. 132: 'His villanous 
Ganimede and he ha' been droning a tobacco pipe, there ever 
since yesterday noon.' 

Jonson's comedies are full of allusions to the lately acquired 



224 l^he Silent Woman [act iiii 

habit of smoking, quite naturally so, for in hunting out his 
countrymen's foibles none was more prominent in the social 
world than this. It seems to have been introduced first into Spain 
in 1560, when Hernandez sent some tobacco plants from Mexico. 
Nicot, the French envoy in Lisbon, introduced it into France 
in 1 56 1. Ralph Lane, who was governor in 1584 of the English 
colony founded in America by Raleigh, and returned to England in 
1586, is thought to be the bringer of the plant and its use into his 
country. Some writers maintain that Sir John Hawkins brought 
tobacco to England as early as 1565 ; but however that be, it was 
made fashionable by Sir Walter Raleigh. Jonson gives most 
attention to his satire on the use of the plant, Every Man In, 
Every Man Out, Cyn. Rev., Alchem., and Bar. Fair, where the 
feminine Falstaif, Ursula, the pig-woman, is herself a smoker. 
James I, Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604), Arber, 1895, is enlighten- 
ing as being the vehement expression of Jonson's royal contem- 
porary on what he considered the most unforgivable custom of his 
subjects. Fairholt has a very satisfactory History of Tobacco. 

68. the neere. ' Near and next . . . are really the comparative 
and superlative of the adj. nigh (A.-S. neah), but they are no longer 
associated with nigh in our consciousness. They survive as 
independent words. Near has become a positive, and a new 
comparative has been formed from it — nearer, which really shows 
a double comparative ending.' — W. and their W. p. 200; cf. also 
Abbott, § 478. The old form of the comparative is frequent in the 
old plays. Jack Juggler, Haz.-Dods. 2. 125: 'But go no near, 
lest I handle thee like a stranger.' Ralph Roister Doister, Haz.- 
Dods. 3. 64 : 

Her thousand pound, if she be thrifty. 

Is much near about two hundred and fifty. 

76. Ostend. After a siege of three years and ten weeks this 
town was taken Sept. 8, 1604 by the Marquis Spinola. The 
slaughter aggregated 120,000 men on both sides. It seems to 
have made a deep impression on the contemporary mind, and to 
have been proverbial for brave resistance ; cf. i Honest Whore 4. i : 
* Indeed, that 's harder to come by then ever was Ostend.' 

91. alwaies. W. is right in considering this a misprint for all 
ways. The context of the original is : 

Sunt diversa puellis 
Pectora; mille animos excipe mille modis. 



sc. i] Notes 225 

98-9. giue verses . . . buy 'hem. Dekker told his gull that 
purchase was an excellent way to obtain poetry for one's own 
composition, Cyn. Rev. 3. i, p. 259, Amorphus advises Asotus, 
who fears that the ladies may ask him for verses : ' Why, you must 
prove the aptitude of your genius; if you find none, you must 
hearken out a vein, and buy ; provided you pay for the silence as 
for the work, then you may securely call it your own.' 

100-2. be frequent in the mention of quarrels, though you 
be staunch in fighting. ' Though you should really be a brave 
man, and therefore not naturally inclined to boast of your valours ; 
yet, to please your mistress, you may often make it the subject of 
your discourse ' — so runs GifTord's lengthy paraphrase of a not 
very compHcated passage. In relation to his own satire it is 
amusing to hear Pyrgus say of Jonson, Poet. 4. 5, p. 464 : Horace 
is a man of the sword. And in Satiromastix Dekker repeats the 
phrase : ' Holds, Capten, 'tis known that Horace is valliant, and 
a man of the sword.' To be sure, Jonson had proved his 
personal valor in duel, as well as in the army. 

1 02-3. leaping cuer stooles. A form of exercise often derided. 
Cf. Every Man Out 3. 3, p. 118 : 

Fast. By this hand, I'd spend twenty pound my vaulting- 
horse stood here now, she might see me do but one trick. 
Mac. Why, does she love activity ? 

2 Hen. IV 2. 4. 265 : 

DoL. Why does the prince love him so, then ? 

Fal. Because their legs are both of a bigness, and a' plays at 
quoits well, and . . . drinks off candles' ends for flap-dragons, . . . 
and jumps upon joined stools. 

104. learned counsell. Cf. Dekker's list of tradesmen neces- 
sary to a gallant, Guh Horn-Booke, ch. 8 : ' Your Tailor, Mercer, 
Haberdasher, Silkeman, Cutter, Linen-Draper,or Sempster stand like 
a guard of Switzers about your lodging.' your french taylor 

comes in for much ridicule from the pamphleteers and Dekker, 
Deuils Answer to Pierce Pennylesse, Pr. Wks. i. 114: 'France, 
where the Gentlemen, to make Apes of Englishmen, whom they 
took dayly practising all the foolish tricks of fashion after their 
Monsieur-shtps, with yards instead of leading Staues, mustred all 
the French Taylors together; who, by reason they had not their 



226 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

haire, wore thimbles on their heads instead of Harnesse caps, euery 
man being armed with his sheeres and pressing Iron, which he 
calls there his goose (many of them being in France) : Al the 
crosse caperers being plac'd in strong rankes, and an excellent 
oration cut out and sticht together, perswading them to sweat out 
their very braines, in deuising new french cuts, new french panes 
in honour of Saint Dennys, onely to make the giddy-pated English- 
man consume his reuenues in wearing the like cloathes.' Cf. ibid. 
Seue7i Deadly Sinnes 59. As early as 1580 Harrison writes: 
' Neither was it merrier with England, than when an Englishman 
was knowne abroad by his owne cloth, and contented himselfe 
at home with his fine carsie hosen, and a meane slop : . . . without 
such cuts and gawrish colours as are worne in these dales, and 
neuer brought in but by the consent of the French, who thinke 
themselues the gaiest men, when they haue most diuersities of 
iagges and change of colours about them.' 

116, cherries ... or apricots. Cherries were a very common 
but favorite fruit with the English. Venders sold them everywhere 
in the market streets. ' May dukes, white heart, black heart, 
Kentish', all these with their luscious names were to be bought 
in season of the street-sellers from three- to sixpence a pound, 
of the shops at a price always from two- to threepence a pound 
higher. Apricots were grown in England early in Elizabeth's 
reign; in 1571 the queen sent the French ambassador a basket 
full of fine ones to show him what good fruit England produced 
{Cor res. dipl. de Fenelon, Paris, 1840). As presents fruit was 
given by subjects to the queen herself, for Nichols quotes in 
Progresses 2. 104 ff., a list of gifts, one being ' Mrs. Morgan a box 
of cherryes, and one of aberycocks '. 

118. Cheap-side . It had been the chief market-place of the city 
since the time of Edward I, growing from a place of scattered markets 
and fairs to the street of Stow's day {Survey 3. 49), ' a very stately 
spacious street, adorned with lofty buildings; well inhabited by 
Goldsmiths, Linen-drapers, Haberdashers, and other great dealers '. 
To-day Cheapside is the central east and west thoroughfare of 
London, but no longer a fashionable shopping district. 

120. riddles. The invention of riddles Jonson enumerates 
among other foolish occupations of the pen. In his Execration 
upon Vulcan, vol. 8. 400, he denies that he ever 



sc. i] Notes 2.2.'^ 

Spun out riddles, or weav'd fifty tomes 
Of Logographes, or curious Palindromes, 
Or pump'd for those hard trifles, Anagrams. 

120-1. great one. W. has a note to the effect that Jonson used 
here a stage term, 'where a less principal character acting in 
subordination to the first, and forwarding all his designs, was said 
secundes partes agere'. But the word was common in the sense of 
person of position : e. g. Dekker, Belman of London, Pr. Wks. 
3. 71 : 'Art thou a tyrant and delightest in the fall of Great- 
ones ? ' 

148. the best philtre i' the world. Cunning women and 
quack-doctors encouraged belief in potions of this sort. Shake- 
speare speaks of such when he has Brabantio say, 0th. 1.3. 59 : 

She is abus'd, stolen from me, and corrupted 
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks. 
Cf. Burton, Anat. of Mel. 546 if., and Gay, Shepherd's Week 4. 1 23 ff. : 
Strait to the Apothecary's shop I went, 
And in love powder all my money spent; 
Behap what will, next Sunday after prayers, 
When to the alehouse Lubberkin repairs. 
These golden flies into his mug I'll throw, 
And soon the swain with fervent love shall glow. 

149-50. madame Medea, or Doctor Foreman. Medea is the 
greatest magician of the Greek myth. She helped Jason win the 
Golden Fleece from Colchis, slew by strategy Pelias, king of 
lolchos, and then, in revenge for Jason's abandonment of her, slew 
his bride with a poisoned garment, and the father by fire. Dr. 
Simon Foreman (1552-1611) was the famous London quack 
believed to be Jonson's model for Subtle in the Alchemist. He was 
connected with the infamous Essex aff"air and Sir Thomas Over- 
bury's death. His life is fully treated by Mr. Hathaway in the 
Introduction to his edition of the Alchemist, pp. 97 ff". Other 
sources of information concerning him are Nashe, The Rise of 
Conjurers', lAWy, Life and Times; and Foreman's y^wrwc/, published 
by Halliwell. Jonson speaks of him D. A. i. 2, p. 16: 

Ay, they do now name Bretnor, as before 
They talk'd of Gresham, and of doctor Foreman. 

Richard Nichol, Overbury's Vision : 

Foreman was that fiend in human shape 
That by his art did act the devil's ape. 



228 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

151. the mounte-bank. This quack-doctor made his first 
appearance in England some three and a half centuries ago. He 
sold medicines, making pompous orations to the public, sometimes 
acting as juggler, &c., to gather a crowd and dispose of his wares. 
He seldom performed alone, and Strutt quotes from an old ballad 
entitled Sundry Trades and Callings : 

A mountebank without his fool 
Is in a sorrowful case. 

Cf, Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle-Light, Pr. Wks. 3 ; and Volp. 
2. I, p. 203. 

Act iiii. Scene II. 

This scene is a parody on bear-baiting ; its noisy fun must have 
been highly amusing to an audience accustomed to the rough sport 
of the Bear Garden. Hentzner, Travels (1590), thus describes the 
game : ' The bulls and bears . . . are fastened behind, and then 
worried by great English bull-dogs ; but not without great risque 
to the dogs from the horns of the one and the teeth of the other ; 
and it sometimes happens they are killed upon the spot. Fresh 
ones are immediately supplied in the place of those that are 
wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows that 
of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, 
standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him 
without any mercy.' Cf. the account of Ordish, London Theatres, 
pp. 237 ff., drawn from the Alleyn Papers. There is an advertise- 
ment in the Dulwich Catalogue, p. 83, and quoted by Wh.-C. : 
' Tomorrowe beinge Thursdaie shalbe seen at the Bear-garden on 
the banc-side a great mach plaid by the gamesters of Essex, who 
hath challenged all comers whatsoever to plaie v dogges at the 
single beare for v pounds, and also to wearie a bull dead at the 
stake; and for your better delight shall have plasent sport with 
the horse and ape and whiping of the blind beare. Vivat Rex '. 
Naturally there was much inveighing against a game of such brutality, 
but it had its noble advocates ; cf. Gefitlemans Magazine, 1 8 1 6, 
vol. 86, part i, p. 205, where is reprinted a MS. of 1606 in 
defence of the game. Complaint against Bear-baiting as a Sunday 
diversion grew so strong that in 1625 James (Act i, Cor. i, ch. i) 
forbids * Bearbaiting . . . BuUbaiting, Enterludes, common Playes, 



sc. ii] Notes 229 

or other unlawful exercises or pastimes' on the Sabbath. The 
sport was made illegal in 1642. With what favor it was revived 
in Charles II's reign we find from Pepys, Diary, Aug. 14, 1666: 
* After dinner with my wife and Mercer to the Bear-garden ; where 
I have not been, I think, of many years, and saw some good sport 
of the bull's tossing of the dogs : one into the very boxes. But it 
is a very rude and noisy pleasure.' (Cf. also May, 1667; Sept. 
9, 1667; Apr. 12, 1669.) Evelyn, ZJz'czry, June 16, 1670: 'I went 
with some friends to the Bear Garden, where was cock-fighting, 
dog-fighting, beare and bull baiting, it being a famous day for all 
these butcherly sports or rather barbarous cruelties. The bulls 
did exceedingly well, but the Irish wolfe-dog exceeded, which 
was a tall greyhound, a stately creature indeed, who beat a cruel 
mastif . . . Two poor dogs were killed : and so all ended with the 
ape on horseback and I most heartily weary of the rude and 
dirty pastime, which I had not seen I think in twenty years 
before.' 

4. bull, beare, and horse. The cups which Otter designated 
by the fanciful names of the Bear Garden were doubtless of 
varying sizes, perhaps shaped or painted to represent the bull, bear, 
or horse. Cf 4. 2. 139. 

18. Saint George, and saint Andrew. This was a signifi- 
cant invocation, because, until James I joined the kingdoms, George 
of England and Andrew of Scotland had little real friendship for 
each other. Dekker, Wonderfull Yeare,Pr. Wks. i. 97 : ' S. George 
and S. Andrew that many hundred yeares had defied one another, 
are now sworn brothers.' And in his Kings Entertainment through 
the City of Londori i^zx. 15, 1603) he plans the following: 'St. 
George and St. Andrew (the Patrons of both Kingdomes) hauing 
along time lookt vpon each other, with countenance rather of 
meere strangers then of such neare Neighbours, vpon the present 
aspect of his Maiesties approach toward London, were (in his 
sight) to issue from two seuerall places on horsebacke, and in 
compleate Armour, their Brestes and Caparisons suited with the 
armes of England and Scotland ... to testifie their leagued combi- 
nation, and new sworne Brotherhood.' St. George was a Cappa- 
docian soldier who attempted to convert Diocletian, and was put to 
death Apr. 23, 303. The dragon was a late addition to his 
history. He was very popular in the Middle Ages, and Richard 



230 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

Coeur de Lion made him especially so among the English. At 
the Council of Oxford, 1222, his feast was ordered to be a national 
festival, and under Edward III he was recognized as the patron 
saint of England. 

27. ofF with his spurres. Sir Amorous would have to lose 
his spurs if he proved a coward and unworthy the rank of which 
his spurs were the symbol. Thornbury, Old and New London 
I. 297, writes that when Sir Francis Mitchell in 162 1 was con- 
victed of certain misdemeanors ' the Knights' Marshall's ' men cut 
off the offender's sword, took off his spurs, and flung them away, 
proclaiming him ' an infamous arrant knave.' The gilt and silver 
spurs of the gallants were ridiculed by the satirists. Dekker, 
Guls Hor?t-Booke, p. 233 : 'Be sure your siluer spurres dog your 
heeles ! ' Chapman, Monsieur d' Olive 3. i : ' You may hear them 
half a mile ere they come at you . . . sixe or seuen make a perfect 
morrice-daunce; they need no bells, their spurs searue their turne.' 
Cf. Strutt, Antiquities 3. 98. 

51. Buz. Titiuilitium. The first of these apparently meaning- 
less words was used in many ways, especially in charms, and 
as part of the vocabulary of people supposed to be possessed ; cf. 
D. A. 5. 5, p. 141. Titivilitivm Ainsworth defines as 'paltry', 
'good for nothing'; Cooper, in his Thesaurus (1587), 'an vgle 
thing of no value — a rotten threade.' G. quotes in regard to it 
from Plautus, Cas. 2.5: ' Non ego istud verbum emissim titivi- 
litio.' The name Titivile, evidently derived from this word, was 
a favorite appellation of the devil in the old moralities ; cf. Ralph 
Roister Doister i. i : M. Mery. ' Sometime Tom Titiuile maketh 
us a feast.' 

Mankind'. Beware of Tytivillus, for he leayth no wey 
That goth in vysybuU and wyll not be sen ; . . . 
He ys worst of them all, God let him neuer then! 

In the Townley play Juditium, Titivillus is a loquacious devil. 
Ward takes up this point, Dram. Lit. i. 76, and Manly, Pre- 
decessors 0/ Shakespeare, p. 326. 

69. Tritons o' the Thames. The son of Poseidon and 
Amphitrite was the original single bearer of the name of Triton. 
Later it was applied to a race of subordinate sea deities, whose 
common attribute was the shell-trumpet, which they blew to calm 



sc. ii] Notes 231 

the waves. The fitness of the epithet as Jonson applied it to the 
' noise of trumpeters ' is evident. 

75-7. clogdogdo . . . mala bestia. C. says this Ms a ridi- 
culous expression formed by the poet, meaning clog proper only 
for a dog'. Mala bestia is from Plautus, Bacch. i. i. 21 : Mala 
tu es bestia, and Catul. 69. 8 : ' Hunc metuunt omnes, neque mirum, 
nam mala valde est Bestia.' 

91. O viper, mandrake. It is very ludicrous to hear Mrs. Otter 
apply the second of these names to the captain. The word is a 
corruption of mandragoras, drake being an OE, form of dragon 
(A.-S. draca, from L. draco). The mandrake has a forked root 
somewhat like the human figure, and was believed to be alive, and to 
shriek so terribly at being uprooted that hearers went mad. Ham. 
and Jul. 4. 3. 47 : 

And shrieks, like mandrakes torn out of the earth, 
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad. 

FalstafF calls his page by the opprobrious epithet, 2 Hefi. IV 2. 

93. mercury and hogs-bones. Mercury, the name given by 
the old alchemists to quicksilver, was a common ingredient of 
washes for the face. Cyn. Rev. i. i, p. 216 : ' They are as tender 
as ... a lady's face new mercuried.' Poet. 4, i, p. 450 : 

Chloe. And Mercury ! pretty : he has to do with Venus, too ? 
Tib. a little with her face, lady ; or so. 
JEpig. 133, vol. 8. 236, Mercury complains: 

They dispense 
His spirits now in pills, and eke in potions, 
Suppositories, cataplasms, and lotions. 

The use of the hogs' bones must have been less popular, but Jonson 
writes of it again in regard to cosmetic mysteries, Cyn. Rev. 5. 5. 2, 
p. 329 : 

Amorph. What are the ingredients to your fucus? 

Perfumer. Nought but sublimate and crude mercury, sir, well 
prepared and dulcified, with the jaw-bones of a sow, burnt, beaten, 
and searced.' 

94-5. Blacke-Priers . . . Strand . . . Siluer-street. Mrs. 
Otter's teeth being dark in color, her husband thinks this a fitting 
place to purchase them. The joke seems to have no other point. 
Mayne's City Match 2, 4 imitates this passage : 



232 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

Hath no eyes but such 
As she first bought in Broad Street, and every morning 
Is put together like some instrument. 

To make her eyebrows like the Strand is a far-fetched joke, playing 
on the word in a significance which has nothing to do with naming 
the thoroughfare. When Jonson mentions Silver Street again in 
S. of New 3. 2, p. 246, Mirth says of it : ' In Silver-Street, the region 
of money, a good seat for an usurer.' 

99. into some twentie boxes. Jonson arraigns men and 
women alike for their artificiality, and the portability of their make- 
up. ^S"^'. I. 2, p. 28, Sejanus asks Eudemus of the court ladies ; 

Which puts her teeth off with her clothes, in court? 
Or, which her hair, which her complexion, 
And in which box she puts it ? 

about next day noone. Satirists of the day blame their 
contemporaries for late rising. Rowland, A Whole Crew of Kind 
Gossips, Mel to be Merry (1609) : 

Daily till ten a clocke a bed she lyes, 
And then again her Lady-ship doth rise, . . . 
At twelve a clocke her dinner time she keepes. 

Stubbes denounces the sinners, p. 87, and Dekker in Guls Horn- 
Booke,Y>. 218: ' Till the sunnes Car-horse stand prancing on the very 
top of highest noon : so then (and not till then) is the most healthfuU 
houre to be stirring ... At what time do Lords and Ladies vse to 
rise, but then? your simpering Merchants wiues are the fairest 
lyers in the world: and is not eleuen a clocke their common 
houre ? ' 

100. a great Germane clocke. German clocks were famous 
for complexity and poor time-keeping. Jonson's comparison is not 
original: Z. Z. Z. 3. i. 192 : 

A woman that is like a German clock. 
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, 
And never going aright, being a watch, 
But being watch'd that it may still go right. 

Dekker, Seuen Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2. 32: 'Taking asunder 
his Charriot (for it stood altogether like a Germane clock, or an 
English lack or Tiirne-spit, vpon skrewes and vices), he scatters 
his Troops.' Middleton, A Mad World, viy Masters 4. i : 



sc. II] Notes 233 

What is she took asunder from her clothes ? 
Being ready, she consists of hundred pieces, 
Much hke a German clock, and near ally'd. 

103. Ha' you done me right. That is, ' Have you drunk with 
me?' Cf. 2 Hen. IV e^. 3. 75: 

Fal. Why, now you have done me right. 

\To Silence, seetftg him take off a bumper?^ 
SiL. Do me right 

And dub me knight, [Singitig.'] Samingo. 

Dekker, i Hottest Whore i. 5, Fluello drinks, saying: 
So I ha' done you right on my thumb-nail. 
Brand, Pop. Aniiq. 2. 331, quotes from the dedication to the 
Drunkard! s Cup, a sermon by Robert Harris, president of Trinity 
College, Oxford, in his Works (1653) : ' There is an art of drinking 
now . . . there is a drinking for the victory, man against man, 
house against house, town against town, and how not ? . . . I doe 
not speake of those beasts that must be answered and have right 
done them, in the same measure, gesture, course, &c., but of such 
only as leave you to your measure (you will keep a turne and your 
time in pledging).' 

107. Sound, sound. True-wit orders the music to begin. 

116. I protest. A common expression of gallants equivalent 
to 'I vow' or 'I swear'. Cyn. Rev. 2. i, p. 240: 'I have devised 
one or two of the prettiest oaths ... to protest withal in the 
presence.' Rom. and Jul. 2. 4. 189: 

Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take 
it, is a gentlemanlike offer. 

Sir Giles Goosecap (1606): 'There is not the best Duke's son in 
France dare say, I protest, till he be one and thirty years old at 
least; for the inheritance of that word is not to be possess'd before.' 
Cf. note 4. 5. 71. 

124. Mrs. Mary Ambree. Little is known of Mary Ambree, 
save that ballads and plays proclaim her a soldier in the siege of 
Ghent in 1584. Shakespeare refers to her, Twelfth Night i. 3. 136, 
' Mistress Mall ' ; and Knight thinks Butler does also when he 
writes : 

A bold virago, stout and tall 

As Jean of France, or English Mall. 

Q 



234 '^^^^ Silent Woman [act ilii 

Field, Amends for Ladies 2, i, Haz.-Dods. 11. iii : 

Grace. D'ye hear, you Sword-and-target (to speak in your own 
key), Mary Ambree, Long Meg. 
Jonson names her again in the Tale of a Tub i. 2, p. 133 : 

TuRFE. My daughter will be valiant, 
And prove a very Mary Ambry in the business. 

And Fortunate Isles, vol. 8. 75 : 

Her you shall see : 

But credit me, 

That Mary Ambree 

(Who march'd so free 

To the siege of Ghent, . . .) 

Were a braver sight. 

Percy's Reliques 2. 218 : 

When captains courageous, whom death colde not daunte, 
Did march to the siege of the cittye of Gaunte, 
They muslred their souldiers by two and by three. 
And foremost in battle was Mary Ambree. 

125. Hellhounds, Stentors. A belief in hell-hounds, who 
hunted down game for their master, the devil, appears in many old 
plays, and is recognized in such works as Lavaterus, Of Ghosts and 
Spirits zvalking by night, 95 ; Peter de Loiers, Treatise of Spectres 
(1605). In Dekker's Witch of Edmonton the devil himself appears 
in this guise to the witch. In the Tempest 4. i, Stephano and 
Trinculo were hunted by * divers spirits in the shape of hounds '. 
Stentor, the Greek herald of the Trojan war, had a voice as loud 
as fifty other men together. 

126. an ill May-day. Morose's adjective is of dubious mean- 
ing. Generally May-day was considered by people the gladdest day 
of the year, with its flower-gathering, Maypole-dancing, and kindred 
forms of amusement. In 151 7 there had been a May-day on which 
the ' prentices of London rose against foreigners and aliens ; many 
of them were imprisoned because of the disturbance, but the king 
through Wolsey issued a general pardon.' This day was to go 
down in history as 'Evil May-day'. (Cf. Stow, Survey i. 254.) 
Perhaps Morose referred to this, or perhaps to the noise always 
inevitable at such a celebration. 

127. the GaUey-foist is a-floate to Westminster. The state 
barge was used when the new mayor went into office, on the day he was 



sc. ii] Notes 235 

sworn in at Westminster. Drake, Sh. and his Times, p. 424, describes 
the occasion thus : ' This day of St. Simon and Jude he (the Mayor) 
enterth into his estate and office : and the next daie following he 
goeth by water to Westminster, in most triumphlike manner. His 
barge beinge garnished with the armes of the citie : and nere the 
sayd barge goeth a shypbote of the Queenes majesties being trim- 
med upp, and rigged lyke a shippe of warre, with dyvers peces of 
ordinance, standards, penons, and targets of the proper armes of 
the sayd Mayor, the armes of the Citie, of his company.' Having 
taken the oath at Westminster, he returns by water to Paul's wharf, 
takes horse with the rest of the aldermen, and enters at the gate of 
Cheapside to Guildhall to dine in company with a thousand people 
at the charge of the mayor and sheriffs. 

144. EatoliflFe. A name belonging to a manor and hamlet in 
the parish of Stepney. Stow, Survey 4. 43, speaks of it as ' a good 
mile from the tower ', connected with the city by almost a continual 
line of houses. ' Ratclifife hath increased in building eastward (in 
place where I have known a large highway, with fair elm trees on 
both the sides), that the same hath now taken hold of Limehurst . . . 
sometime distant a mile from Ratclifife. ... Of late years ship- 
wrights, and (for the most part) other marine men have built many 
large and strong houses for themselves, and smaller for sailors.' 

Act II II. Scene III. 

14. I'll call you Morose. The custom among women of 
calling themselves by their husbands' names is satirized again in 
D. A. 4. I, p. 98 : 

Lady T. Pray thee call me Tailbush, 
As I thee Eitherside; I love not this madam. 

Lady E. Then I protest to you, Tailbush, I am glad 
Your business so succeeds. 

Lady T. Thank thee, good Eitherside. 

21. your coacla, and foure horses, &c. The extravagant 
household planned by Centaure was the ideal of this extravagant age. 
Gifford's Massinger, Works 4. 43, 44: ' Alsoe I haue six or eight 
gentlemen ; and I will haue my two coaches, one lyned with veluett 
to myself, with four very fayre horses, and a coach for my women. 
... I will haue twoe coachmen, one for my owne coach, and other 



236 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

for my women. . . . Alsoe, for laundresses, when I trauayle I will haue 
them sent away before with the carrydges to see all safe, and the 
chambermayde I will haue goe before with the groomes. . . . Alsoe, for 
that yt is indecent to crowd upp myself with my gentleman-vsher in 
my coach I will haue him to haue a convenyent horse to attend me 
either in city or country. And I must haue two footmen.' 

24. Bed'lem. The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem was 
situated at first outside Bishopsgate, close to St. Botolph's Church. 
It was endowed as a convent by Simon FitzMary, Sheriff in the 
year 1240. In 1547, on the petition of Sir John Gresham, Lord 
Mayor, Henry VIII gave the building of the dissolved priory to the 
City of London as a hospital for lunatics. Visitors were allowed 
to see the inmates on payment of an entrance fee, and at one time 
the hospital ' derived a revenue of at least 400 pounds a year from 
the indiscriminate admission of visitors'. The inmates were for 
the most part wretchedly cared for, many were chained, and most in 
miserable garments, with no better beds than ones of straw. In 
1775 an end was made of the practice of converting the hospital 
into a public spectacle. Subtle speaks of it in that capacity, 
Alchem. 4. 2, p. 132 (of Dame Pliant) : 

To hurry her through London, to the Exchange, 
Bethlem, the China-houses. 

Cf. I Honed Whore ^. 2, which has its scene laid in the Bethlehem 
Hospital, and illustrates the deplorable condition of affairs 
therein. 

47. tell us the newes. Jonson's comedy The S. of News \^ the 
best commentary to this line. For the love of news, and the early 
manner of gatherinof and disseminating it, cf Mr. Winter's Introd. 
pp. XXV flf. in his edition of the comedy. 

48. Make anagrammes of our names. The transforming of 
letters in a word, name, or phrase, to form, a new word thereby was 
as common as inventing riddles and writing sonnets. N. E. D. 
says that the earliest recorded one is in Puttenham, English Poesie 
(1589), Arber's Reprint. Jonson shows how little he values them 
'\xv\i\'s, Execration upon Vulcan, vol. 8. 400 (cf. note 4. i. 120), but he 
is nevertheless the coiner of some himself, Masque of Hymen, 
vol. 7. 56 : 

Rea. Juno, whose great name 
Is Unio, in the anagram. 



sc. Ill] Notes 237 

Honour of Wales, vol. 7. 330 : 

Ev. You will still pyt your selve to these plunses, you mean 
his madestee's anagrams of Charles James Stuart. 
Jen. Ay, that is Claims Arthur's Seate. 

Cf. also Babington, Queen 0/ Arrag. (1640). Haz.-Dods. 13. 334, 
Cleanthe admires men : 

Who on my busk, even with a pin, can write 
The anagram of my name; present it humbly. 
Fall back, and smiie. 

48. eock-pit. Any of the numerous places of resort where the 
sport of cock-fighting was carried on, may be meant. The one later 
known as the Phoenix Theatre stood in the parish of St. Giles-in- 
the-Fields, and is said by Prynne to have demoralized the whole 
of Drury Lane. This place was torn down by the 'prentices in 
one of their raids on Shrove Tuesday, March 4, 1616-17. The 
Cock-pit in St. James's Park stood at some steps leading from the 
Birdcage Walk into Dartmouth Street, near the top of Queen 
Street. There was the no less famous Cock-pit built at Whitehall 
by Henry VIII, which was later used as a hall for political speeches. 
Then there was another in Jewin Street, and one in Shoe Lane. 
It was very much a thing of fashion to witness the sport of cock- 
fighting in Jonson's time, for it was a favorite pastime of the 
monarch, who went where it might be enjoyed at least twice 
a week. Stow says, ' Cocks of the game are yet cherished by 
divers men for their pleasures, much money being laid on their 
heads when they fight in pits, whereof some be costly made for 
that purpose.' 

53. there be in presence. Ellipsis of the nominative; cf. 
Abbott, § 399. 

55. a neighing hobby-horse. Originally this was a horse of 
Irish breed very popular in England. Later it was the name given 
to a horse made of wicker-work or other light material introduced 
into the morris and on the stage. Naturally the name of the 
performer came to be ' hobby-horse ', and finally it was applied in 
derision to any foolish person. So Much Ado 3. 2. 72 : 

Bened. Old Signior walk aside with me; I have studied 
eight or nine wise words to speak to you which these hobby-horses 
must not hear. 



238 The Silent Woman [act iiii 



Act iiii. Scene IIII. 

1. O my cursed angell, that instructed me to this fate. 

A harsh construction, in which httle excuse can be found by calling 
it Latinized. Cursed angell is bad angel, concerning the doctrine 
of which beings we find in Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, pp. 5, 6 ; 
and Lavaterus, Of Ghosts and Spirits walking by night, 160 ff. 
2 Hen. IV I. 2. 186 : 'You follow the young prince up and down 
like his ill angel.' 2 Hen. IV 2. 4. 362 : ' There is a good angel 
about him.' Dekker, Old Fortunatus 1.2:' Thou hast looked very 
devilishly ever since the good angel left thee.' 

13. bellfry. ' Belfry \s not connected with ^1?//, It is oi berfray 
from MH.Ger. ber{c)veit {vaodiQm Bergfriede), "place of safety", 
from bergen, " conceal ", and vride (modern Friede), " peace ", " pro- 
tection ". Its original sense was " a kind of tower ". The bells 
came later and are unessential.' — W. and their W., p. 337. West- 
minster-hall. This was a noisy place enough ; its courts of justice 
always in session, and its shops full of business. The building had 
been put up during the last three years of Richard II's reign, 1397-9. 
The early parliaments sat here ; the law courts were held in the 
open hall, the Exchequer Court at the entrance end, and the Court 
of Chancery and Kings at the opposite end. Part of the great hall 
was rented to sellers of books, stationers, sempstresses, toy-dealers, 
&c., and the rent went to the Warden of the Fleet. These dealers 
were still a nuisance in the days after the Restoration. Wycherley, 
Epilogue to the Plain Dealer : ' In hall of Westminster sleek semp- 
stress vends amidst the court her wares.' Pepys, Diary, Jan. 20, 
1659-60 : 'At Westminster Hall, where Mrs. Lane and the rest of 
the maids had their white scarfs, all having been at the burial of 
a young bookseller in the Hall.' 

14. i' the cock-pit. That Morose rightly named this among 
the noisiest places in London Brand's description confirms, Pop. 
A7itiq. 2. 59 flF. Especially boisterous was it when on Shrove 
Tuesday the game of cock-throwing was indulged in. Cf. Volp. 
3. 2. 7. 237 : 

The bells in time of pestilence, ne'er made 
Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion ! 
The Cock-pit comes not near it. 



sc. iiii] Notes 239 

the fall of a stagge. ' In the time of James this must have 
been a very noisy scene — hurrahing, blowing horns, and sounding 
trumpets. Sometimes the royal feet were assiduously bathed in the 
warm blood.' — C. tower-wharfe. Noisy because the ordnance 
was stored here; cf. note, i. 2. 15. 

16. Belins-gate. Stow, Survey i. 2, writes that Belinsgate is 
' now used as an especial port or harbor for small ships and boats 
coming thereto, and is now the largest Watergate on the River of 
Thames.' He quotes Geoffrey of Monmouth as affirming that the 
gate was built by Belin, a king of the Britons. He describes it 
further, 2. 165. In Jonson's time Billingsgate remained the busiest 
London wharf except Queenhithe. The fish-markets for which it 
became notorious were established 1599. The foul language of the 
fishwives and others gave a new word to the English language. 
Fuller, Worthies (ed. 1662), p. 197, writes : ' One may term this the 
Esculine Gate of London. Here one may hear Ibiguas jurgatrices! 
The character of the old wharf and market is unchanged to-day. 

17. I would sit out a play. One of the many Jonsonian 
passages which has been splenetically interpreted, and charged 
with being written in derision of Shakespeare. This particular 
passage, says Malone, is aimed at Ant. and Cleop. with its simple 
stage direction : 'Alarum a/ar-off, as at a sea-fight'. G. has more 
than vindicated Jonson of such charges, in his Proofs of Ben 

fonson's Malignity, vol. i. 193. The references to Epiccene are 
206, 208, 212, 220, and the note to the passage under con- 
sideration. Works 3. 423, 

58. it 's melancholy. ' It is the disease called melancholy.' 
This was supposedly caused by a superfluous amount of black bile 
in the system. Black bile was one of the four liquids or humors 
recognized by ancient physiology as belonging to the body. The 
others were blood, phlegm, and bile. 

60. Pliny, and Paracelsvs. The old first-century encyclo- 
pedist is here named with the mediaeval Paracelsus because of his 
studies in natural history. His writings are multifarious — military, 
grammatical, rhetorical, biographical, historical, besides his most 
important Historia Naturalis, of which thirty-seven books are pre- 
served. Paracelsus was a famous German-Swiss physician and 
alchemist who lived 1 493-1 541. A student, and later a lecturer 
on medicine at the University of Basel, he did much for enlightened 



240 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

study of medicine, gave an impulse to pharmaceutical chemistry, 
and was the originator of a theosophic system of philosophy, but 
his name is associated as well with conjuring and necromancy, in 
which he showed interest. 

70. Haue a lecture read vpon me. With this fantastical 
punishment Corvino threatens Celia, Volp. 2. 3, p. 219 : 

I will make thee an anatomy, 
Dissect thee mine own self, and read a lecture 
Upon thee to the city. 

Dissection of the human body had not been allowed until Elizabeth 
granted the privilege in 1564. 

83-4. Raynard the foxe . . . call'd Denes philosophie. 

Of course Sir Amorous is wrong to say the Reynard story was 
called Done's Philosophy — a very old and popular epic originating 
in ^sop, and coming into English as early as June 1481, when 
Caxton printed his translation The History of Reynard the Fox. 
For detailed information cf. Froude, Short Studies in Great Subjects ; 
W. J. Thomas, The History of Reynard the Fox (Percy Soc. 1844). 
Arber in English Scholar's Library has a reprint of Caxlon's. On 
this latter work G. has the note : ' There was a very old collection 
of Oriental apologues called Calilah u Dumnah (better known as 
the Fables of Pilpay), which was translated about the middle of the 
eleventh century, out of the Persian or Arabic into Greek, by 
Simeon Seth : it was afterwards turned into Latin, and subse- 
quently into Italian, by one Doni. This last was rendered into 
English by Sir Thomas North, 1605, under the title oi Doni' s Moral 
Philosophy.' 

94. you discommended them. This unusual word I find 
again Fotir PP, Haz.-Dods. i. 343 : ' I discommend your wit.' 

101. put her to me. This is said of placing a servant in one's 
charge, as Beaum. and Fletch., Philasier 3. 2. 97 : 

Arethusa. He was your boy, and you put him to me, 
And the loss of such must have a mourning for. 

106. Sick-mans salue. Thomas Bacon, a Calvinist divine 
(151 1-67), published this tract in 1561. It was kept in print by 
the Stationers' Company until the seventeenth century, and was for 
many years the butt of jokes. His works have been reprinted by 
the Parker Society. Beaum. and Fletch. Philaster 4. i : ' He 



sc. Jiii] Notes 241 

looks like a mortified member as if he had a sick man's salve in 's 
mouth.' \n Eashvard Ho 5. 2, Quicksilver could 'speak you all 
the Sick Man's Salve without book'. Cf. i Sir John Oldcastle 4. 2. 
106-7. Greene's groats-worth of wit. Robert Greene's last 
pamphlet, written just before his death, reads — 'Greens | Groats- 
worth of wit, I bought with a Million of | Repentmince. \ Describing 
the follies of youth, the falshoode of makeshift | flatterers, the miserie 
of the negligent, and mischiefes | of deceiving Courtezans. Written 
before his death, and published at his \ dying request. | Fcelicern fuisse 
infausium, \ Vir essetvulnere Veritas. \ London | Printed by Thomas 
Creede, for Richard Oliue | dwelling in long Lane and are there | 
to be solde. 1596 | ' This work of Greene is not famous for its 
story, which is rather a poor tale of two unloving brothers, but for 
the fact that it records the first literary reference to Shakespeare, of 
whose rising fame the dying author was frankly envious, and for 
whom he had no wiser epithet than that of the ' upstart crow ', ' the 
only Shake-scene in a country '. 

118. Preach folke asleepe. C. thinks this story suggested by 
one in Latimer's Syxte Sermon, 12 Apr. 1549: 'I had rather ye 
should come as the tale is by the gentlewoman of London. One 
of her neyghbours mette her in the streate, and sayde, " Mestres, 
whether go ye 1" " Mary ", sayd she, " I am goynge to S. Thomas 
of Acres to the sermon. I could not slepe all thys laste nyght, and 
I am goynge now thither. I never fayled of a good nap there " ; 
and so I had rather ye should go a napping to the sermons, than 
not to go at all.' Mayne, City Match 4. 2 : 

AuR. One that preaches the next parish once a week 
Asleep for thirty pounds a year. 

1 1 9-20. An old woman that was their physitian. Cunning- 
women were commonly consulted as physicians. Stubbes, Ajiat. of 
Ad., part 2. 53 : ' Now a dales euerie man, tagge and ragge, of what 
insufiiciencie soeuer, is suffered to exercise the misterie of physick, 
and surgerie, and to minister both the one and the other, to the 
diseased, and infirmed persons ; but to their woe, you may be sure. 
Yes, you shall haue some that know not a letter of the books (so 
farre are they from being learned or skilful in the toongs, as they 
ought to be that should practise these misteries) both men and 
women, yoong and old, that, presuming vpon experiences forsooth 



242 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

(for that is the greatest skill) will arrogate great knowledge to 
themselues, and more than the learnedest doctor vpon the earth 
will doe/ p. 54 : 'I would wish that euery ignorant doult, and 
especially women, that haue as much knowledge in physick or 
surgery as hath lackanapes . . . should be restrained from the 
public use thereof.' William Clowes, A short and profitable treatise, 
SjC. (London, 1579), speaking of poor doctors says: 'Yet I do 
not mean to speak of the old woman at Newington, beyond 
St. Georges Fields, unto whom people resort as unto an oracle ; 
neither will I speak of the woman on the Bankside, who is as 
cunning as the horse at the Cross Keys ; nor yet of the cunning 
woman in Seacole Lane.' There is satire in plenty against 
the medical profession in general : Edward Hake, News out of 
Paul's Churchyard, satires 3, 4 ; Joseph Hall, Virgideviiarum, 
bk. 2, sat. 4. 

138. ladanum? or opium? Ladanum must here be used as 
a synonym of the tincture of opium, laudanum ; it cannot mean 
ladanum, the modern word for a stomachic made from certain 
plants grown in Spain, Crete, Syria, &c. Opium is the inspissated 
juice of Papaver somniferum, a poppy cultivated from early anti- 
quity for the sake of its medicinal property, which was known to 
the Greeks, but was not made efficient use of until the seventeenth 
century. It is at present the most important of all medicines 
{Cent. Diet). 

148-9. some diuine ... or canon-Lawyer. The divine could 
advise from a purely theological point of view ; the canon-lawyer 
would know the ecclesiastical law in the case. Phillimore, 
Eccles. Law of the Church i. 548 ff., states that marriage was 
controlled by civil law under Justinian. The Church made the 
ceremony public ; St. Augustine gave it a more religious signi- 
ficance, and in the ninth century the civil and ecclesiastical law of 
marriage became one. Roman canon law was applicable in Eng- 
land until ' other civil regulations interfered '. At the Reformation, 
marriage was determined to be no longer a sacrament, but it 
' retained those rules of the canon law which had their foundation 
not in the sacrament or in any religious view of the subject, but in 
the natural and civil contract of marriage '. Ibid. i. 638 : ' Till the 
passing of the 20 & 21 Vict. c. 85 (1857) EngHsh ecclesiastical 
courts had jurisdiction in all cases of marriage. By that Act . . . 



sc. II ii] Notes 243 

[it] was vested in the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial causes.' 
This court is now merged in the High Court of Justice. 

158. Is that his keeper. Haughty's query emphasizes the 
possibility of Morose's madness, and shows in what uncompli- 
mentary terms she speaks of Dauphine. Contrast her conduct 
toward him in Act 5. 2. 

166. set me i' the nicke. Subtle prophesies that Dapper 
shall win at all games, Alchem. i. i, p. 29 : 

If I do give him a familiar, 

Give you him all you play for ; never set him : 

For he will have it. 

Nice Wanton, Haz.-Dods. 2. 171 : 

Iniq. Here, sirs, come on; seven — [^They sei hwi.'\ 
Eleven at all — 

IsM. Do you nick us? 

Middleton, Blurt, Master-Constable 2. 2 : 

The masque dogg'd me, I hit it in the nick ; 
A fetch to get my diamond, my dear stone. 

Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, ch. 23 : 'If honest Jack Hildebrod puts 
you not in the way of nicking them all, may he never cast 
doublets.' 

167. primero. Drake thinks it the 'most ancient game of 
cards'. Nares gives: 'Mr. Daniel Barrington, in the Archaeologi, 
vol. 8. 132 : "Each player had four cards dealt to him, one by one; 
the seven was the highest card in point of number that he could 
avail himself of, which counted for 21 ; the six counted for 
1 8 ; the five for 1 5 ; and ace for the same ; but the two, three, 
and four for their respective points only. The knave of diamonds 
was commonly fixed upon for the quinola, which the player might 
make what card or suit he thought proper; if the cards were of 
different suits, the highest number was the primero (or prime) ; but 
if they were all of one colour, he that held them won the Jltish.'' ' 
Perhaps the game of Prime mentioned by Sir John Harrington in 
his satirical descriptions of court games is the same. However 
great was its early popularity, it was so much out of fashion by 
1680 that it is not included in the Compleat Gamester of that year. 
Despite the many references attesting its popularity and its special 
use among gamblers, all points concerning it as a game are not 



244 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

clear. There is an epigram on Priviero in Dodsley, i. i68. 
M. W. of W. 4. 5. 104: 'I never prospered since I foreswore 
myself at primero.' In Henry VIII 5. i. 7, the king and the 
Duke of Suffolk play at primero. In Pappe with an Hatchet it is 
said : ' If you had the foddring of the sheep you would make the 
Church like Primero, foure religions in it, and nere one like 
another.' Cf. Dekker, Behnan of London, Pr. Wks. 3. 125; and 
Taylor, History of Playing Cards, 1865, p. 267. 

192. cast of kastrils. These hawks were the sort allotted by 
law for servants to use when hawking. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe (Harl. 
Misc.) 6. 170: ' Kistrilles or windsuckers, that filling themselues 
with winde, fly against the wind euermore.' Cf. note, i. 4. 77 on 
windsucker. Hawking grew to the zenith of its popularity under 
James I, who pursued it with much pleasure, and made it one 
of the most splendid amusements of the court. Strutt, Sports and 
Past. 31, writes: 'The practise of hawking declined from the 
moment the musket was brought to perfection ... At the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century it was in the zenith of its glory. 
At the close of the same century the sport was rarely practised, and 
a few years afterwards hardly known.' There are many old 
treatises on the subject : Treatise on Hawking, Dame Juliana 
Barnes (Wynkyn De Worde), 1496; The Booke of Faulco?irie, or 
Hawking, George Tuberville, Gentleman, 1575; Gentlemen s Aca- 
demie, Gervase Markham, 1595; fewelfor Gentrie, 161 4; Country 
Contentments, Gervaise Markham, 1619; Hawks atid Hawking, 
Edmund Best, 1619. 



Act iiii. Scene V. 

18. an execution to serue vpon 'hem. An execution is the 
means whereby the senience of the law is put in force. It was in 
the form of a writ, or order, generally directed to the sheriff, and 
served by him upon the party. The writ capias ad satisfaciendu??i 
commanded the sheriff to take the party's body into custody, and is 
the one jocularly referred to here ; cf. Blackstone, Comm. bk. 3, 
ch. 26, § 415. 

29. Doe you obserue this gallerie. The structure of the early 
theatre was exceedingly simple. The uncurtained stage projected 



sc. v] Notes 245 

into the pit ; it afforded no side entrances, but was reached by two 
doors opening from the back, which would serve as the studies here. 
There was a gallery above, which was used for many purposes — 
Juliet's balcony, Palamon and Arcite's prison, Jessica's window, or 
as a vantage-ground for actor spectators as those in Act 4. 6. 

30. a couple of studies. This room seems to have been 
a part of many Elizabethan houses. Jul. Caesar 2. i. 7 : 'Get me 
a taper in my study, Lucius.' Rom. and Jul. 3. 3. 75 : ' Run to my 
study.' Beaum. and Fletch. Elder Brother i. 2. 

31. tragi-eomcedy. Plays contemporary with Epiccetie bear 
this classification, which the author of several defines in his Preface 
to the Reader, The Faithful Shepherdess, a pastoral tragi-comedy. 
Fletcher there writes : ' A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect 
of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough 
to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to 
make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar 
people, with such kind of trouble as no life to be questioned ; so 
that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as 
in a comedy.' Guelphes, and the Ghibellines. A comical 
application of the names designating in Italy, from the thirteenth to 
the seventeenth century, the two striving parties of the state. The 
former were the papal and popular party, the latter the aristocratic 
and imperial party. 

33. you two shall be the chorus. The Greek custom of intro- 
ducing in tragedies a chorus to witness and comment on the action 
of a drama was not quite obsolete in English plays. The first 
English tragedy, Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, printed 1565, 
has a chorus, and Shakespeare varied the device in Henry V, where 
Chorus is almost synonymous to Prologue, being a speaker who 
appears to outline the action of each Act. Jonson, in the inter- 
means of his comedies, often makes use of groups of people, whose 
function he tends to narrow to critical comment, but who, never- 
theless, are analogous to the classic chorus. 

34. the arras. These tapestry hangings, with their designs of 
landscapes and human groups, covered the walls of the rooms in 
the better houses. In early days the arras was hung close to the 
walls, but later, in order to preserve the fabric from the damp, it 
was attached to wooden frames, leaving between it and the wall 
a space large enough for a person to conceal himself in. As 



246 77?^ Silent Woman [act iiii 

a device for dramatists it became popular to place eaves-dropping 
persons behind the arras; of. Hamlet 3. 3. 28; King Johti 4. i. 2 ; 
Much Ado I. 3. 63, &c. 

42. betweene whoni. Shakespeare keeps the nominative case 
in the same question, Hamlet 2. 2. 194 : 

Pol. What is the matter, my lord ? 
Ham. Between who.'' 

71. protested, a coward. So in Beaum. and Fletch. Little 
French Lawyer i. i : * Thou wouldst not willingly live a protested 
coward, or be call'd one ?' Cf, note, 4. 2. 116. 

98-9. set out to take possession. In the days when property 
might be begged on various pretexts (cf. 4. 7. 5 and note) the new 
owners sometimes had a dangerous time in entering on their 
estates. 

107. some-bodies old two-hand-sword. This is here merely 
the ordinary long sword, sometimes called two-hand, because of its 
length and awkwardness in comparison to the more modern rapier. 
Taine, Eng. Lit. i. 172, says: 'About the twentieth year of 
Elizabeth's reign the nobles gave up shield and two-handed sword 
for the rapier,' The real two-hand sword was at one time the 
distinctive weapon of the German lansquenets, mercenary foot- 
soldiers taking part in the French religious wars. It was an 
enormous weapon, with a straight expanding blade of portentous 
size, double-edged, sharp at the point, long in the hilt, with massive 
cross-guard, and spiked at the base of the blade. 

108-9. that sword hath spawn'dsuch a dagger. The same 
comic allusion is repeated Neiv Inn 2. 2, p. 338 : Fly. He has the 
father of swords within, a long sword. As for the dagger, it was 
worn as a sign of gentihty in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries ; it was often richly ornamented and jeweled. It was 
generally worn at the girdle, a little in front of the sword, as 
many illustrations show ; but there seems to have been a time, 
at least in Italy, when it was worn at the back. Cf. Rom. and 
Jul. 5. 3. 205 : 

Cap. This dagger hath mista'en — for, lo, his house 
Is empty on the back of Montague. 

110. ealliuers. An interesting history of the word is found in 

Maitland, History of London, and quoted by Fairholt : ' Before the 



sc. v] Notes 247 

battle of Mountguntur, the princes of the religion caused several 
thousand harquebusses to be made, all of one calibre, which was 
called Harquebuse de Calibre de Monsieur le Prince: so I think some 
man, not understanding French, brought hither the name of the 
height of the bullet of the piece, which word calibre is yet continued 
with our good canoniers.' Whether this is an entirely true account 
or not, it is at least certain that it was a light harquebus introduced 
into England in the sixteenth century, and was the lightest portable 
firearm, excepting the pistol, and was fired without a rest. 
muskets. The home of these weapons, which succeeded the 
awkward harquebus, was Spain. It was not until 1851 that their 
successors arrived in the shape of the Enfield rifle, which was 
a welcome change, since the musket was so heavy that it was often 
fired on a rest, and so poor a mechanism that the soldier had to 
carry with him a powder-flask, bullet-bag, bandoleers, and a match- 
cord or twisted tow, in order to use it at all. 

111. Justice of peace's hall. There is a description of one 
of these official weapon-museums in Drake, Sh. and his Times, p. 24, 
taken from Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of 
London, part i. 220: 'The halls of the justice of peace were 
dreadful to behold. The skreen was garnished with corselets and 
helmets, gaping with open mouths, with coats of mail, launces, 
pikes, halberts, brown bills, bucklers.' 

113. fencer challeng'd at so many seuerall foiles. Strutt, 
Sports and Past., p. 2 6 1 , quotes from The Third University of England 
(1615) : ' In this city there be manie professors of the science of de- 
fence, and very skilful men in teaching the best and most off"ensive 
and defensive use of verie many weapons, as of the long-sword, back- 
sword, rapier, and dagger, single rapier, the case of rapiers, the 
sword and buckler, or targets, the pike, the halberd, the long-staff, 
and others.' Cf. note, i. i. 181, for Pepys's account of a fencing 
bout ' at eight weapons '. Henry VIII made the professors of fence 
a company or corporation by letters patent, in which fencing is 
called ' The Noble Science of Defence '. Practice of it grew so 
widespread ' that in 1595 the queen issued a proclamiation to hmit 
and control "the schools of fence" in which "the multitude and 
the common people " were being taught " to play at all kinds of 
weapons ", and the size of the rapier and dagger were regulated '. 
Traill, Social Eng. 3. 574. 



248 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

114-15. Saint P vlchres parish. St. Sepulchre, in the ward of 
Farringdon Without, was an unwholesome locality, for Traill, Social 
Eng., quotes a medical writer of the year 1564 to the effect that 
twice in his memory the plague had begun in St. Sepulchre's parish 
(S. Poulkar) 'by reason of many fruiterers, poor people, and stink- 
ing lanes, as Turnagain Lane, Sea-coal Lane, and other such 
places '. Pie Corner, famous in story, was in this parish, a few 
yards north of the church. 

115-16. victuall himselfe ... in his breeches. Every one 
familiar with pictures of James I knows what great, awkward nether 
garments he affected, partly for fashion and partly for protection 
against assassination. Planchd writes : ' The costume of England 
in the reign of James I was little more than a continuation of the 
dress in the latter portion of Queen Elizabeth. The long-waisted, 
peascod bellied doublet remained in vogue, and the conical hat, 
and large Gallic or Venetian hose, slashed, quilted, stuffed, and 
guarded (laced) were worn as before, but increased in size, from 
the quantity of stuffing used in them, which owes its adoption, 
according to a contemporary writer, to the pusillanimity of the new 
monarch, who " had his cloathing made large, and even the doublets 
quilted, for fear of stellets (stilettoes). His breeches in great plaits 
and full stuffed ".' Great breeches had, however, been worn even 
before the days of Elizabeth, and in the fourth and fifth years of 
Philip and Mary an order was made by the Society of the Middle 
Temple that no member should wear ' great breeches ' in their 
hose, after the Dutch, Spanish, or Alman fashion on pain of 
forfeiting 35-. i^d. for the first and second offence. The fashion 
was not ignored by the satirists. Lodge and Greene's Looking 
Glasse for Londo7i and E7tgla?id {i^g^), has a character who hides 
beef and beer in his breeches to sustain him on fast days ; Samuel 
Rowland, Knaves 0/ Spades and Diamonds, compares ' the great large 
abhominable breech' to' brewers hop-sack ers ' ; Butler , Nudidras 1. 1: 

With a huge pair of round-trunk hose, 
In which he carried as much meat 
As he and all his knights could eat. 

167-8. broke some lest vpon him. N. E. D. quotes an 
occurrence of this expression as late as \%'^% Eraser's Mag. 2>. 
54 : ' The landlord and waiter . . . were not suffered to do anything, 
save to break their jokes on the members.' It is very common at 



sc. v] Notes 249 

the time of our play, and before. Lyly, Campaspe 2.1; Much 
Ado \ . \ . '^,29, ; Two G.q/'Ver. ■^.i. ^8. We still speak of ' breaking 
news '. 

170-1. went away in snuffe. G. thinks this phrase is derived 
from 'the offensive manner' in which a candle goes out; Southey 
thinks it refers rather ' to a sudden emotion of anger, seizing a man, 
as snuff takes him, by the nose '. The last supposition is supported 
by the many plays on the word found in the writers of this day, 
but especially by the pun in i Hen. IV i. 3. 39, where Hotspur 
jokes about the pouncet-box, which a certain lord 

Gave his nose and took 't away again ; 

Who therewith angry, when it next came there. 

Took it in snuff. 

Poei. 2. I, p. 393 : * For I tell you true, I take it highly in snuff to 
learn how to entertain gentlefolks of you, at these years.' 

175. walkes the round. From a quotation of G., The Castle 
or Picture 0/ Policy (1581), this is found to be a reminiscence of 
a military expression : ' The general, high marshall with his pro- 
vosts, serjeant-general, . . . gentlemen in a company or of the 
rounde, launce passado. These ', says the author, ' are special ; 
the other that remain, private or common soldiers '. The duty of 
these men, W. explains, was to inspect such men as ' centinels, 
watches, and advanced guards ; and from their office of going their 
rounds, they derive their name'. Cf. Every Man In 3. 5, p. 81 : 
' Your decayed, ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round ' ; and 
Alchetn. 3. 2, p. 96 : 'I have walk'd the round '. 

191. Hee'll out- wait a sargeant. Neither for well-known 
persistence nor for less commendable characteristics was this officer 
admired by his contemporaries. Earle, Micro-C. p. 57 : 'A ser- 
geant or Catch-pole is one of Gods ludgements ; and which our 
Roarers doe only conceiue terrible.' In Overbury's Characters, 
The Sergeant has a place for detailed consideration : ' The devil 
calls him his white son . . . For Sergeant is quasi, See-argent, look 
you, rogue, here is money.' Then Dekker, A Paradox in 
praise, Pr. Wks. i. 353 ff. : ' What should I say more of Sergeants, 
though I cannot speake too much of them ? they are the painfullest 
members of the common-wealth : they are the lawes Factors, the 
citizens men of warre, that bring in bad Dettors, who like pirates 

R 



250 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

haue seized vpon others goods, as lawful prize ; they are the 
Scriueners good Lords and maisters, they are Relieuers of prisons 
and good Benefactors to Vintners Hall : they are keepers of yong 
gentlemen from whore-houses, and driuers of poore Handy-craft 
men from bowling allies. In one word they are the only bringers 
home of the prodigall Child to feede vpon the veale after he hath 
liued vpon Acorns.' 

199. sir A-Iax Ms inuention. This gibe is aimed at Sir 
John Harrington and his small treatise on sanitary matters pub- 
lished 1596. G. in a detailed note, vol. 3. 439, concludes: 'His 
gains from his well-timed labours were apparently confined to the 
honour of contributing to the merriment of the wits, Shakespeare, 
Jonson, Nabbes, and many others, who took advantage of his own 
pun (a-jakes), and dubbed him a knight of the stool ; . . . Even 
the grave Camden condescends to be facetious at his expense.' 
Cf. Camden, Remains, p. 117; Jonson, Epig. 133^ vol. 8. 239; 
Z. Z. Z. 5. 2. 575. Sir John Harrington (i 561-16 12), who was 
a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, was temporarily banished from 
Court for his Metamorphosis of Ajax. A license was refused for 
printing this work, but it went through three impressions ; a new 
edition of 100 copies was printed at Chiswick, 1814. Harrington's 
other works were Orlando Furioso, 1591 ; Epigrams, 1615; 
Englishman's Doctor, 1609; and Nugae Antiquae, a miscellaneous 
collection of original papers in prose and verse. 

231. a whiniling dastard. Just what the adj. means can be 
only conjectured. The nearest approach to it is the noun whimling, 
' idiot ', a not uncommon word ; cf. Death of Robert, Earl of 
Huntingdon i. 2, Haz.-Dods. 8. 231 : ' He keeps a paltry whimHng 
girl.' Beaum. and Fletch., Coxcomb 4. 7 : Mother. ' Go, whim- 
ling, and fetch two or three grating loaves Out of the kitchen to 
make gingerbread of.' Jonson, Love Restored, vol. 7. 203 : ' Alarum 
came that one of the whimlins had too much.' Dekker, i Honest 
Whore i. 2 : Fustigo. 'He's a very mandrake, or else (God bless 
us) one a' these whiblins, and that 's worse.' ' Barnes, the Dorset- 
shire poet, gives, as a West of England word, Whindlin, small and 
weakly.' — C. 

236. make a motion. What sounds like Robert's Rules of 
Order is a common expression enough, e. g. Every Man Out 
2. I, p. 66: FuNGOso. 'Faith, uncle, I would have desired you to 



sc. v] Notes 251 

have made a motion for me to my father.' It affords many a pun 
with the other meaning of 'puppet-show'. 

238. catastrophe. Jonson has seriously defined what is meant 
by this term, taken from Greek dramatic criticism, in Mag. Lady 
I. I. pp. 28 fF. ; and in the outline of Act 5, The New Inn, p. 302. 

249-50. if euery iest thou mak'st were not publish'd. 
Cf. 2. 4. 112, and note. 

253. There 's a carpet. Of woven covers for chairs and tables 
we get some information from Harrison in Holinshed, vol. i. 
317 : * Manie farmers ... by vertue of their old and not of their 
new leases, haue for the most part learned also to garnish their 
cupboards with plate, their ioined beds with tapestrie and silke 
hangings, and their tables with carpets and fine naperie, whereby 
the wealth of our countrie (God be praised therefore . . .) dooth 
infinithe appeare.' Cf. New Inn i. i, p. 321 : 

Host. Will they not throw 
My household-stuff out first, cushions and carpets, 
Chairs, stools, and bedding? is not their sport my ruin? 

S. of News I. 2, p. 172 : 'Set forth the table, the carpet, and the 
chair.' 

262. It doth so. So used redundantly ; cf. Abbott, § 63, and 
Epiccene 5. 3. 18 : 'Many will do so.' 

274. because you shall be. Because means 'in order that'. 
Cf. Bacon, Essays, Marriage and Single Life : ' There are some 
foolish rich covetous men that take a pride in having no children 
because they may be thought so much the richer'; and Matt. 20. 
31 : 'And the multitude rebuked them, because they should hold 
their peace.' Cf. note, Dedic. 8, By cause. 

293. I haue had a hundred, sir. Daw's naive frankness in 
confessing his passive submission to punishment is paralleled by 
Overdo's acceptation of his beating, and his blindness to the 
ludicrousness of it : ' When, sitting at the upper end of my table, 
as I use, ... I deliver to them, it was I that was cudgeled, and 
show them the marks.' Bar. Fair 3. 7, p. 417. So behaved 
another hero in the Knickerbocker History of New York, bk. 5, 
ch. 9. 206: 'Von Paffenburgh is said to have received more 
kicking . . . than any of his comrades, in consequence of which 
he had been promoted — being considered a hero who had seen 
service, suffered in his country's cause.' 

R 2 



252 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

309-10. against the hilts. The plural is used as commonly 
as the singular, a fact concerning which Mr. Deighton writes : 
' This word is commonly explained in dictionaries as the handle 
of the sword. It is, however, not the handle itself, but the 
protection of the handle . . . Formerly it consisted of a steel bar 
projecting at right angles to the blade on each side. This form 
of the two transverse projections explains the use of the plural.' 
Cf. Every 3Ian In 2. 5, p. 57 : ' sucked the hilts' ; 3. i, p. 67 : 
' I could eat the very hilts' ; 4. i, p. 103 : ' I'll run my rapier to 
the hilts in you.' Jul. Caes. 5. 3. 43 : ' Here, take thou the hilts' ; 
ibid. 5. 5. 28: 'Hold thou my sword-hilts whilst I run on it.' 
I Hen. IV 2. 4. 230 : ' Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.' 
Dekker, Witch of Edmonton 2.1: 

Mother Saw. Thou art in love with her ? 
Cuddy. Up to the very hilts. 

322. at the blunt : i. e. with the flat of the sword. 

339. All hid, sir lohn. This is a well-known signal in what 
Biron, L. L. L. 4. 3. 77, calls: 'AH hid, all hid; an old infant 
play.' Brand, Pop. Antiq. 2. 391 writes of this game: 'There was 
an old sport among children, called in Hamlet, " Hide fox and all 
after", which, if I mistake not, is the same game that elsewhere 
occurs under the name of " all hid ", v/hich, as Steevens tells us, is 
alluded to in Dekker's Satiromastix : " Our unhandsome-faced 
poet does play at bo-peep with your grace, and cries all-hid, as 
boys do ". In a curious little book entitled A Curtaine Lecture, 
1637, p. 206, is the following passage: "A sport called all-hid, 
which is a mere children's pastime ".' 

345. Damon & Pythias. The story of these famous friends 
dates from the fourth century b. c. The latter, a Pythagorean of 
Syracuse, was condemned to die for plotting against the life 
of Dionysius I. Damon gave himself as hostage for his friend 
while Pythias went to bid farewell to his kindred. When the 
doomed man returned, Hberating Damon at the last moment, 
Dionysius was so moved by their perfect friendship that he 
released both men and adopted the philosophy of Pythagoras. 



sc. VI] Notes -^ 253 

Act nil. Scene VI 

4. vtter'd 'hem in the coUedge. Utier is nsed in the sense 
of ' disposed of in the way of trade ' or ' made pass current as 
worthy'. Cf. Every Man In 3. 2, p. 80: 'He would utter his 
father's dried stock-fish.' Winter's Tale 4. 4. 329: 'Money's 
a medlar, That doth utter all men's ware-a.' Upton's suggestion to 
change utter to usher seems unnecessary. 

6. braueries. Not 'gallants' as in i. i. 78, but the fin'^f^^attire 
which they wore, Cf. Every Man In i, r, p. 11 : 

Knowel. Nor would I, you should melt away yourself 

In flashing bravery. . . . 

27. their faces set in a brake. Generally a framework 
intended to hold anything steady, as a horse's hoof when being 
shod, the meaning is here figurative, 'to assume an immovable 
expression of countenance ' ; cf. N. E. D. for similar examples. 
The fad for stiff attire, the starch, the wire,'the bumbasted clothing, 
must have conduced to a most inflexible carriage of the body. 
Underwoods 9, vol. 8. 303 : 

Drest, you still for man should take him; 
And not think he 'd eat a stake, 
Or were set up in a brake. 

Every Man Out 2. i, p. 58 : Carlo says of Puntarvolo — ' Heart, 
can any man walk more upright than he does .? Look, look ; as if 
he went in a frame, or had a suit of wainscot on '. Earle, Micro- 
C. no. 9 : ' The chief burden of his braine is the carriage of his 
body and the setting of his face in a good frame.' 

29. purer linnen. Stubbes does not at all approve of the 
daintiness of a gallant's linen, p. 53: 'Their shirtes, which all in 
a manner doe weare (for if the Nobilitie or Gentrie onely did weare 
them, it were somedeal more tolerable), are eyther Camericke, 
Holland, Lawn, or else of the finest cloth that maye bee got. . . . 
And these shurts are wrought through out with needle work of 
silke, and such like, and curiouslie stitched with open seame, and 
many other knackes besydes.' 

30. french hermaphrodite. A scornful word not seldom in 
Jonson's mouth; cf. i. i. 81 and note; also S. 0/ News i. i, 
p. 161. 

36-7. for such a nose ... Or such a leg. All the ridiculous 



\ 



254 



TJne Silent Woman 



[act hit 



minutiae of compliment Jonson makes use of again and again, as 
when Phantaste comments on Asotus, Cyn. Rev. 4. i, p. 276: 
' Such a nose w^re enough to make me love a man, now.' Of 
the many old r^omedies playing with the conceit of the wearers 
of silk stockir^gs, and frankly complimentary ladies, perhaps the 
most famous, instance is that of the cross-gartered Malvolio. Cf. 
Field, W. Vi a Weathercock 1.2: 

Kate- The hose are comely. 

Luc.. And then his left leg ; I never see it, but I think on 
a plyim-tree. 

/\BRAHAM. Indeed, there 's reason there should be some differ- 
efice in my legs, for one cost me twenty pounds more than the 
other. 

Wily Beguiled (1613) : ' Strut before her in a pair of Polonian legs 
as if he were a gentleman usher to the great Turke, or to the Devil 
of Dowgate.' 

38. a very good lock : a love-lock ; cf. note 3. 5. 70. 

45. vnbrac'd our brace of knights. In this pun it should 
be remembered that unbrace used to mean 'disarm'. 

47. ingine. Jonson' s favorite word to express plan or plot 
occurs with especial frequency in Sejanus, and gives the name 
Engine to a schemer in D. A. Cf. Sej. 3. i, p. 70; 5. 5, p. 125 ; 
Mag. Lady 5. i, p. 91 ; &c. Engim was the OF. form, Willia?n 
0/ Pal erne, 286: 'Mult sot la dame engine et mal', followed by 
Chaucer, and so spelled with e in Mid. Eng. 

51. Havghty is kissing. This courtly habit was harshly 
satirized and much preached against. Minsheu, Pleasant and 
Delighlfull Dialogues (1623), pp. 51-2: 'I hold that the greatest 
cause of dissoluteness in some women in England is the custome of 
kissing publiquely, for that by this meanes they lose their shame- 
fastnesse, and at the very touch of the kisse there entreth into them 
a poison which doth infect them.' Marston, Dutch Courtezan 
(1605) 3. i; Works 2. 144 : ' Boddy a beautie ! 'tis one of the most 
unpleasing, injurious, customes to ladyes ; any fellow that has but 
one nose on his face, and standing collar, and skirtes also, lined 
with taffety, sarcenet, must salute us on the lipps as familiarly.' 
Puritane (1607) 2. i : 'Nay, you must stand me till I kiss you; 
'tis the fashion everywhere i' faith, and I came from court even 
now.' 



sc. VI] Notes 255 

61-2. all their actions are gouerned by crude opinion. 

Less bitterly Shakespeare had said, Two G. of Ver. i. 2. 22 : 

LucETTA. I have no other but a woman's reason : 
I think him so, because I think him so. 

73. Pylades and Orestes. Cf. Every Man Out 4. 4, p. 140: 

SoGLiARDO. Ay, he is my Pylades, and I am his Orestes : how 
like you the conceit ? 

Carlo. O, 'tis an old stale interlude device. 

76-7. in your countenance, or outward bearing. There is 
the same significance in cotmtenance when in the Prologue to Sir 
Thopas the host says of Chaucer : 

He semeth elvish by his contenance. 
For un-to no wight dooth he daliaunce. 

98. my boy had it forth. ' Gentlemen were followed in the 
streets by their servants who carried their master's sword. Their 
dress was blue, with the master's badge in silver on the left arm.' — 
Besant, London, P- 310. Forth used without a verb of motion ; cf. 
Abbott, § 41. 

100. my gold handle was broke. The gay weapons carried 
by the two knights were the rapier or small sword, which had come 
into fashion some twenty years after Elizabeth became queen. She 
had been forced to pass a sumptuary law limiting its length to 
three feet. They were worn largely for decoration in Jonson's 
time. Dekker, Lanthorne and Candle- Light, Pr. Wks. 3. 220: 
'An accomplished gallant, with all acoutrements belonging (as 
a fether for his head, gilt rapier for his sides, & new boots to 
hide his polt foote).' Justice Shallow does not think the French 
weapon can compare with the old-fashioned English long sword ; 
M. W. 0/ W. 2. I. 2^1: 'I have seen the time, with my long sword 
I would have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.' Stubbes, 
Anat. of Ab., p. 62, in his violent disapproval describes them care- 
fully: ' To these haue they their rapiers, Swords, and Daggers, gilt 
twice or thrice ouer the hilts, with . . . scaberds and sheathes of 
Veluet or the like ; for leather, though it be more profitable and 
as seemely, yet wil it not carie such a porte or countenance like 
the other. And will not these golden swords & daggers almoste 
apale a man (though otherwise neuer so stout a martialist) to haue 
any deling with them ? for either to that end they be worne, or els 



256 The Silent Woman [act iiii 

other swords and rapiers of bar yron and Steele were as hansom as 
they, & much more conducible to that end whereto swords and 
rapiers should serue, namely, for a mans lawful and godly defence 
against his aduersarie in time of necessitie.' 

103. What a consent there is, i' the handles. G. calls this 
a Platonism. Cf. Volp. 3. 2, p. 234: 'There is a concent in face 
in voice, and clothes.' 



Act iiii. Scene VII. 

5. your house had been beg'd. ' By the old common law 
there is a writ de idiota inquirendo, to inquire whether a man be an 
idiot, or not : which must be tried by a jury of twelve men ; and, if 
they find \ivccipurus idiota, the profits of his lands and custody of 
his person may be granted by the king to some subject who has 
interest enough to obtain them.' — Blackstone, Comm. bk. i, ch. 8, 
§ 303. Under Henry VIII the term came to cover in its meaning 
cases of concealments, i. e. land possessed under false pretenses 
which had belonged to dissolved monasteries and the like. Strype, 
Annals 0/ Elizabeth 2. 209, says that 'this commission for conceal- 
ments was withdrawn in 1572, but for many years property was an 
unstable possession,' if some rapacious courtier could make an accu- 
sation smacking of treason against a landowner whose estate he 
envied '. Murder in a house did not look well, to say the least, 
nor sound well even in manner of a jest. Cf. Poet. 5. i, p. 481 : 
Tuc. ' Remember to beg their lands betimes ; before some of 
these hungry court-hounds scent it out.' Jack^Drum's Entertainment, 
Haz.-Dods.: 'I have followed ordinaries this twelve month, onely to 
find a foole that had landes, or a fellow that would talke treason, 
that I might beg him.' 

7. For man-slaughter, sir. C. calls attention to the fact that, 
not long before, the laws for this crime had been made more 
stringent. Blackstone, Comm. bk. 4, ch. 14: 'On account of the 
frequent quarrels, and stabbings with short daggers, between the 
Scotch and the English at the accession of James I. . . . It hath 
been resolved that killing a man by throwing a hammer, or 
other weapon, is not within the statute ; and whether a shot with 
a pistol be so, or not, is doubted.' But swords, rapiers, and 
daggers were. 



sc. vii] Notes 257 

12. such a noyse i' the court. This is from Libanius, but 
applicable to England. Cf. note, Westviinster 4. 4. 13. In Jonson's 
list of terms following he has been almost outdone by Dekker, 
Guls Horn-Booke, p, 245, in his recitation of the terms heard in 
a threepenny ordinary : ' If they chance to discourse, it is of 
nothing but of Statutes, Bonds, Recognizances, Fines, Recoueries, 
Audits, Rents, Subsidies, Surties, Inclosures, Liueries, Inditernents, 
Outlawries, Feoffments, Judgments, Commissions, Banker outs, Amerce- 
ments, and of such horrible matter.' 

40. out o' them two. A construction, despite the fact that 
it issues from the scholar True-wit's mouth, which cannot be 
vindicated. 

43-4. a ciuill gowne with a welt. A civil gown would be 
the usual garb of the civil lawyer of the time. The welt of fur or 
velvet was called likewise a gard, and is often mentioned. Greene, 
Quippefor an Vpstart Courtier, speaks of ' A blacke clothe gown, 
welted and failed ' ; and later, ' I saw fiue fat fellows, all in damask 
cotes and gowns welted with veluet, verie braue '. 

47-8. And I hope, without wronging the dignitie of either 
profession. Jonson is using the ounce of prevention method, for 
his treatment of the law in Poet, had brought down such criticism 
that he printed the answer in the Apol. Dial. p. 514 : 

Pol. No ! why, they say you tax'd 
The law and lawyers, captains and the players. 
By their particular names. 

AuT. It is not so. 
I used no name. My books have still been taught 
To spare the persons, and to speak the vices . . . 
But how this should relate unto our laws. 
Or the just ministers, with least abuse, 
I reverence both too much to understand ! 

In Satiromastix, p. 244, Tucca says on this subject: ' He tell thee 
why, because th' ast entred Actions of assault and battery, against 
a companie of honourable and worshipful Fathers of the law ; you 
wrangling rascall, law is one of the pillars of the land, and if thou 
beest bound too 't (as I hope thou shalt bee) thou 't prooue a skip- 
lacke, thou 't be whipt.' 



258 The Silent Woman [act v 

Act V. Scene I. 

12. a riddle in Italian. Roger Ascham speaks plainly of 
what he considers the immoral influence in the prevailing fashion 
of Italian literature, travel, and customs, in The Scholemaster, 
Arber's Reprint, pp. 77 ff., and he quotes the popular saying 
' Englese Italianato, e un diabolo incarnato ', of the truth of which 
he expresses conviction. Jonson uses riddle (cf. 5. 2. 44) less 
innocently than the word merits; cf. Volp. 5. i, p. 292 : 

MoscA. Go home, and use the poor Sir Pol, your knight, well, 
For fear I tell some riddles ; go, be melancholy. 

14. I am no scriuener. Clerimont pretends wrath at the 
insinuation that he is a scrivener. This lawyer's assistant in the 
drawing up of deeds, contracts, &c., was notorious for his dis- 
honesty. Cf. Stubbes, Anai. 0/ Ab., \i. i22>: ' There be no men so 
great doers in this noble facultie and famous science (of usury) as 
the scriueners be . . . the Scriuener is the Instrument wherby the 
Diuell worketh the frame of this wicked work of Vsurie.' Dekker, 
Seuen Deadly Sinnes, Pr. Wks. 2. 37 : ' Scriueners haue base 
sonnes, and they all common Brokers ' ; ibid., Lanthorne and 
Candle- Light 3. 207 : ' They haue no paper (in hell), but all things 
are engrossed in Parchment, and that Parchment is made of 
Scriueners skinnes fiead off after they haue been punished for 
Forgerie.' 

1 7. his boxe of instruments. This convenience was assumed 
by such proper people as Ambler, the gentleman-usher to Lady 
Tailbush, Z>. ^. 5. i, p. 124: 'A fine new device I had to carry 
my pen and ink, my civet, and my tooth-picks, all under one.' 

23. Nomentack. 'An Indian chief, from Virginia, who was 
brought to England some years before this was written.' — G. 

24. the Prince of Moldauia. Aloldavia was a former prin- 
cipality, now a part of Roumania, bounded by Bukowina on the 
north, by the Pruth on the east, Wallachia on the south, and the Car- 
pathians on the west. It was founded in the fourteenth century, 
and became tributary to Turkey in the fifteenth. What princely 
representative of this far-off" land had ever come to London I am 
unable to discover. 

27. lets wanton it. Cf. 2. 6. 26 for another example of the 



sc. I] Notes 259 

quasi-redundant it; N.E.D., It, B. II. 9; Abbott, § 226. So in 
3 Hen. VI 3. 3. 225: 'To revel it with him and his bride.' 
W. and their Ways, p. 306, traces the history of the word from its 
original meaning of ' not well brought up ' through ' perverse ' or 
' without motive ' to its present force of ' licentious '. 

44-5. you come as high from Tripoly . . . lift as many 
iony'd stooles. Tripoly is explained by Gilford as a 'jest 
nominal ', which depends chiefly on the first syllable of the word. 
From the allusions made to it, it can safely be assumed to have 
been a feat of jumping, apparently an indoor sport, and doubtless 
meriting the derision it is subjected to. These sports are coupled 
Cyn. Rev. i. i, p. 217 : 'Hercules might challenge priority of us 
both, because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join'd stools 
at the arm's end, than we.' Beaum. and Fletch., Monsieur Thomas 
4. 2: 

Get up to that window there, and presently, 

Like a most compleat gentleman, come from Tripoly. 

Jonson, Epig. 115, vol. 8. 218: 'Can come from Tripoly, leap 
stooles, and wink.' 

46. if you would vse it : i. e. ' practise it '. 

64. the great bed at Ware. Nares tells of this monstrous 
old piece of furniture, that it is ' celebrated by Shakespeare and 
Jonson, is said to be still in being, and visible at the Crown Inn, or 
at the Bull, in that town. It is reported to be twelve feet square, 
and to be capable of holding twenty or twenty-four persons ; but 
in order to accommodate that number, they must lie at top and 
bottom, with their feet meeting in the middle.' The truth is the 
bed is still to be seen at Rye House, a hotel four miles nearer 
London than Ware. Cf. Twelfth Night 3. 2. 49 : ' And as many lies 
as will lie in thy sheet of paper, though the sheet were big enough 
for the bed of Ware in England.' Farquhar, Recruiting Officer 
(1706) I. i; 'A mighty large bed bigger by half than the great 
bed of Ware ; ten thousand people may lie in it together and 
never feel one another.' 

95-6. Don Bride-groome. JDon, the Spanish ' Master ' or 
' Mister ', was often used in a depreciatory manner, influenced by the 
inimical feeling between the nations, which has been influential in 
making the stereotyped dark stage villain. Dekker, in The Deuills 
Answer to Pierce Pennylesse, Pr. Wks. i. 90, 93, refers to Don 



26o The Silent Woman [act v 

Lucifer, Don Pluto loi, Don Belzebub. In his Lanthorne and 
Candle-Light 3. 205 Don Lucifer and others occur. Spanish words, 
in the last half of the sixteenth century, had crept into English, 
especially into the vocabulary of war. Wheatley, Every Man In, 
says that in R. Barret's Theorike and Practike of Modern Warres 
(1598) a third of the words are Spanish. 

97. Hang him, mad oxe. Doubtless one of the inexhaustible 
number of jokes made at the expense of cheated husbands ; cf. note 
3. 6. 108-9. ' Horn mad ' is a commonly occurring vulgarism, and 
the present line is paralleled in Marston's Dutch Courtezan 3. 3 : 
' And you make an ass of me, I'll make an ox of you — do you see ? ' 

Act V. Scene II. 

14-15. they are your mere foiles. The figurative use of this 
fencing term followed hard upon the introduction of the rapier and 
fencing into England. N.E. D. gives a reference as early as 1581. 
Dekker remarks in Guh Horn-Booke : ' Let him be suited if you 
can, worse by farre then your selfe, he will be a foyle to you.' 

24. a Fidelia. Trusty seems to be introduced mio Epicoene for 
the purpose of furnishing a pun or two upon her suggestive name ; 
cf. 4. 4. 98, 99. 

31. make any credit to her: 'give any credit to her'. W. 
suggests that it is a Latinism from the \d.\ovs\ fidem/acere. 

35. none o' the clearest. W. thinks this a corruption of 
cleanest, but the correction seems to me unnecessary. The definition 
of ' freedom from bodily fault ', with especial reference to the skin, 
is possible and reasonable; cf. Sej. 2. i, p. 41 : 

Liv. How do I look to-day? 

EuD. Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus was well 
laid on. 

Among Misc. Pieces, An Interlude, vol. 9. 330, an old nurse asks if 
her colleague remembers a certain child ' that you gave such a bleach 
to 'twas never clear since ' .^ 

36. pargets. This almost obs. word Jonson used in another 
form, Cyn. Rev., Palinode, p. 358 : 

Pha. From pargetting, painting, flicking, glazing, and renewing 
old rivel'd faces — 

Cho. Good Mercury defend us. 
Walter Pater uses the word in Imaginary Portraits, p. 49. 



sc. ii] Notes 261 

38. by candle-light. Mavis had perhaps had the assistance 
of Marston's Dr. Plaster-face, Marston, Malcontent 2. 4. Works, 
2. 233, who was the best 'that ever made an old lady gracious, by 
torch-light, — by this curde, law ! ' 

49. they haunt me like fayries. Belief in fairies was very 
common in the lower classes and among the rural people. It is 
unnecessary to call attention to Shakespeare's use of fairy folk and 
kindred beings in the Mid. Nighfs Dream and the Tempest. Scot, 
Discouerie of Witchcraft, bk. 3, ch. 4 : ' The fairies do principally 
inhabit the mountains and cauerns of the earth, whose nature is to 
make strange apparitions on the earth, in meadows, or on moun- 
tains, being like men and women, soldiers, kings, and ladies, 
children, and horsemen, clothed in green, to which purpose they do 
in the night steal hempen stalks from the fields where they grow, 
to conuert them into horses as the story goes.' Drake, Sh. and his 
Times, p. 489, sketches briefly the coming of fairy lore, thus : ' Belief 
in fairies and demons came to the South of Europe from the East, 
the Persian Peri and Dives, and the Arabian Genii of two orders, 
through the medium of the Crusades and the Moors in Spain, but 
to England from the North, the Goths having a perfectly developed 
system of fairy mythology in the first or metric Edda of 1007.' 
Some books upon this subject of fairy life are T. Keightley, Fairy 
Mytholos^y, 1852 ; E. S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, 1891 ; 
W. C. Hazlitt, Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare, 1875. Cf. also 
Addison, Spectator, nos. 12, no, 117, 419. 

51. you must not tell. To confide in any one about a fairy's 
gift rendered it void, tradition said, and drew down the fairy giver's 
anger. Children yet believe this in regard to childish wishes made 
to stars, to a broken wish-bone, &c. Secrecy is always necessary 
for a charm to work. Field, W. is a Weathercock i. i : 

Nev. I see you labour with some serious thing. 
And think (like fairy's treasure) to reveal it, 
Will cause it vanish. 

Winters Tale 3. 3. 127: 'This is fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove 
so: up with't, keep it close . . . nothing but secrecy.' Jonson, 
The Satyr, vol. 6. 447, Mab gives the queen a jewel : 

Utter not, we do implore. 
Who did give it, nor wherefore. 



262 The Silent Woman [act v 

67-8. his Knights reformados. Clerimont calls Daw and 
La-Foole by this uncomplimentary title, because of their disgrace 
met at Dauphine's hands in Act 4. 5. It is used again, Every Man 
/« 3. 2. 8i : 

E. Know. Into the likeness of one of these reformados had he 
moulded himself so perfectly . . . that hadst thou seen him, thou 
wouldst have sworn he might have been serjeant-major, if not 
lieutenant-coronel to the regiment. 



Act V. Scene III. 

Act 5. 3 exposes the ridiculously loose state of the English law of 
divorce in the time of James. Many of the arguments are archaic, 
but scarcely obsolete. Henry VIII had divorced Catharine of 
Arragon by sentence of the ecclesiastical court, on the ground of 
impediment of affinity, she being his sister-in-law, and the marriage 
was thus made void ab inilio. Anne ofCleves he had divorced after 
betrothal, on the ground of precontract, ligamen. In 161 3 the 
Countess of Essex obtained a royal commission from James, 
authorizing twelve bishops and doctors of ecclesiastical law to hear 
her complaint for absolute divorce. It was granted (five bishops 
absenting themselves from the judgment room) on the ground of 
the twelfth impediment. Ecclesiastical law from earliest times had 
had jurisdiction over ' tithes, because paid to men of the church ; 
in causes of matrimony, because marriages were for the most part 
solemnized in the church ; in causes testamentary, because testa- 
ments were made in extremis, when churchmen were present.' 
William the Conqueror established the temporal and spiritual courts 
in England, and the best authorities grant that ' Large portions (to 
say the least) of the canon law of Rome were regarded by the courts 
Christian in this country as absolutely binding statute law' (Mait- 
land). Everything changed at the Reformation. Henry prohibited 
the academic study of canon law (Stat. 32 Hen. VIII, c. 38), but it 
remained the kernel of English ecclesiastical law. Thomas Fuller, 
Hist, of Univ. of Cambridge (1655), sec. 6 : ' Although the civilians 
kept canon law in commendam with their own profession, yet both 
twisted together a.re scarce strong enough to draw unto them a liberal 



sc. Ill] Notes 263 

livelihood.' The ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over matters 
matrimonial until they were abolished in 1857, when they dis- 
appeared in anything but a blaze of glory. 

9. i' the I'enuoy. According to Cotgrave's definition, ' It is 
the conclusion of a ballad or sonnet in a short stanza by itself, and 
serving, oftentimes, as a dedication of the whole '. It is a fanciful 
word for ' conclusion ', as here used. 

10. 'twill be full and twanging. The Cent. Did. classes 
twanging as slang; cf. Massinger, i?(?z?Z(2« ^<r/tir 2. i : 'An old fool, 
to be gulled thus ! had he died ... It had gone off twanging.' 
Dekker, Shoemaker's Holiday 3. 4 : Firk. I'll fill your bellies with 
good cheer, till they cry twang. 

11. looke to your parts now. With True-wit's instruction to 
his players cf. Hamlet 3. 2. 

20. a brace of iugglers. Sometimes these acrobats and trick- 
performers were identical with the mountebank, sometimes they 
traveled with him to draw crowds while he sold quack medicine. 
Jonson describes one in Paris Anniversary, vol. 8. 44 : ' An excellent 
juggler, that can do tricks with every joint about him, from head to 
heel. He can do tricks with his toes, wind silk, and thread pearl 
with them, as nimble a fellow of his feet, as his hands.' There is 
an interesting account of these traveling showmen in Thornbury, 
Sh. Eng, I. 150 ff., and Ady, Candle in the Dark: The Art oj 
Juggling {161^). 

27. god saue you. Dekker found this fault of snobbishness 
among the young Londoners, and said in Guls Horn-Booke, p. 219 : 
' Bid not good-morrow so much as to thy father, tho he be an 
Emperour. An idle ceremony it is, and can doe him little good . . . 
a lewe neuer weares his cap threed-bare with putting it off: neuer 
bends i' the hammes with casting away a leg: neuer cries God 
Saue you, tho he sees the Diuell at your elbow.' 

33. master Doctor . . . master Parson. Lawyers and doctors 
rightly belonged to the class addressed as ' master ', but Jonson is, 
in his careful repetition, glancing at the general ambition to be 
known by this title, a fact already touched upon (note i. 2. 5), and 
which may be supported by the evidence of Stubbes, Anat. 0/ Ab., 
p. 122 : 'And thei see the world is such, that he who hath moni 
enough shalbe rabbled and maistered at euery word, and withal 
saluted with the vaine title of "worshipful" and "right wor- 



264 The Silent Woman [actv 

shipful ", though notwithstanding he be a dunghill gentleman, or 
a Gentleman of the first head, as they vse to terme them. And to 
such outrage is it growne, that now adayes euery Butcher, Shoe- 
maker, Tailor, Cobler, Husbandman, and other ; yea, euery Tinker, 
pedler, and swineherd, euery artificer and other, gregarii or dims, of 
the vilest sorte of men that be, must be called by the vain name of 
"Maisters".' There is more on this subject, Harrison's England 
I. 133, 137. Cf also note on doniine, 1. 69. Selden, Table Talk, 
under Parson, p. 82 : ' Though we write (Parson) differently, yet 
'tis but Person ; that is, the individual person set apart for the service 
of such a Church ; and 'tis in Latin persona, and Personatus is 
a personage. Indeed with the canon Lawyers, Personatus is any 
Dignity or Preferment in the Church.' 

46. so I shall hope any. For the omission of the prepos.yor 
cf. Abbott, § 200. 

53. endeare my selfe to rest. This is an extraordinary 
construction, for the indir. obj. is always personal as having feeling 
upon which the endearing may be accomplished. Cf. Jonson's own 
use of the word in other cases. Cyn. Rev. 4. i, p. 282 : 

Amor. If you could but endear yourself to her affection you were 
eternally engallanted. 

Cat. 3. I, p. 237 : 

Caes. Reports ! ... he does make and breed 'em for the people 
To endeare his service to them. 

64. Eltham. This Kentish town is best known for the ruins 
of Eltham palace, which is thrice mentioned in i Hetiry VI. When 
Epiccene was written there was a motion there of enough interest 
to attract the attention of the playwrights, and although its subject 
and history is unknown, the motion itself is alluded to in several 
old plays, besides Peacham's verses to Coryat, quoted by Gifford, 
in which is mentioned ' that divine motion at Eltham '. Jonson 
speaks less reverently of it in Epig. 97, On the New Motion, vol. 

8. 200 : 

See you yond' Motion ? not the old fa-ding, 
Nor Captain Pod, nor yet the Eltham thing. 

69. domine Doctor. This title is fully explained in a note by 
Knight in which he makes use of A Decacordon of Ten Quodliheticall 
Questions concermng Religion and State, Sec, newly printed, 1602 ; 



sc. Ill] Notes 265 

* By the laws armorial, civil, and of arms, a Priest in his place in 
civil conversation is always before any Esquire, as being a Knight's 
fellow by his holy orders : and the third of the three Sirs which 
only were in request of old (no baron, viscount, earl, nor marquis 
being then in use), to wit, Sir King, Sir Knight, and Sir Priest ; 
this word Dominus in Latin being a noun substantive common to 
them all, as Domitius mens Rex, Dominus mens Joab, Domitttis 
Sacerdos : and afterwards when honours began to take their sub- 
ordination one under another, and titles of princely dignity to be 
hereditary to succeeding posterity (which happened upon the fall of 
the Roman Empire), then Dominus was in Latin applied to all 
noble and generous hearts, even from the King to the meanest 
Priest, or temporal person of gentle blood, coat-armour perfect, 
and ancestry. But Sir in English was restrained to these four; 
Sir Knight, Sir Priest, Sir Graduate, and in common speech Sir 
Esquire : so as always since distinction of titles were. Sir Priest 
was ever the second.' It is the third of this group of four in which 
we are interested, and of which we may state briefly that all those 
who had taken their first degree in arts, the bachelor degree, were 
entitled to Dominus, which, however, was very often translated sir in 
English (cf. note 1. 33), and many clergymen were known by that 
EngUsh title. Cf. Mayne, Citjy Match 4. 2, Haz.-Dods. 13. 276 : 

A Sir John . . . that preaches the next parish once a week 

Asleep for thirty pounds a year. 

Shakespeare has a clergyman, Sir Oliver Martext, m. As You Like 
It, and a Sir Hugh Evans in the M. W. of W., and in L. L. L. the 
curate Sir Nathaniel. Reed's Shakespeare 5. 8 : ' Within the limit 
of myne own memory, all readers in chapels were called Sir and of 
old have been writ so ; whence, I suppose, such of the laity as 
received the noble order of Knighthood being called Sirs too, for 
distinction sake had Knight writ after them ; which had been 
superfluous, if the title Sir had been peculiar to them.' 

73. diuorce, a divertendo. Cutbeard wanted the pleasure of 
explaining that this ' is a separation of two de facto married together ; 
of which there are two kinds, one a Vinculo Matrimonii, the other 
a Mensa et Tlioro. Annulment, on the other hand, arises upon a 
nullity of the marriage through some essential impediment ', which, 
despite Cutbeard's next statement, exist in the canon law to the 
number of fourteen. 

S 



266 The Silent Woman [act v 

77-8. the Canon-law affords diuoree but in few cases. 

Really, canon law did not ' afford divorce ' at all, but it recognized 
certain obstacles to a valid union. Blackstone, Comm. bk. i. § 441 : 
' For the canon law (which the common law follows in this case) 
deems so highly and of such mysterious reverence of the nuptial 
tie, that it will not allow it to be unloosed for any cause whatsoever, 
that arises after the union is made.' Phillimore, Eccles. Law of the 
Church o/Eng. i. 640 : ' The necessity of procuring an Act of Parlia- 
ment for a divorce in each separate case proved the common law 
of England did allow married persons to be divorced, but treated 
the marriage bond as indissoluble.' So in 1603, Canon 106, they 
assented to a mejisa et thoro, but forbade the parties to a divorce 
to remarry. 

81. dirimere eontractum, . , . irritum reddere matri- 
monium. A divorce severs the bond {vinculo) of matrimony, 
while an annulment in effect decrees that no vaUd marriage has 
ever been consummated. ' The canonical impediments to marriage, 
such as consanguinity, affinity, . . . render a marriage merely void- 
able.' Until a voidable marriage is set aside it is practically valid ; 
when set aside it is rendered void from the beginning ; cf. Bishop, 
Marriage and Divorce, 6th ed., vol. i, § 105. 

92. there are seuerall species. Blunt says that impedi- 
mentum erroris is of only three kinds : ' as to the person, fortune, 
or quality of one of the parties to the marriage, but only the first 
would render the contract null and void ; as involving absence of 
consent.' But Cutbeard's four species agree with Bishop, Mar. and 
Div. vol. I, § 208, who quotes the canonist Ayliffe, Parergon Juris 
Canonici Anglicafii, 362, 363: 'First, error personae, as, when 
I have thought to marry Ursula, but, by mistake of the person, 
I have married Isabella. An error of this kind renders the marriage 
void ; " for deceit is oftentimes wont to intervene in this case, which 
ought not to be of any advantage to the person deceiving another." 
Secondly, error of condition; as when I think to marry a free- 
woman, but through mistake marry a bond woman. This will avoid 
the marriage. But if the condition of the party were known " the 
church did not dissolve such a marriage." Thirdly, error of fortune; 
which does not invalidate the marriage. Fourthly, error of quality, 
as where a man marries a woman believing her to be a chaste 
virgin, or of a noble family, or the like, but finds her to be de- 



sc. Ill] Notes 267 

flowered and of mean parentage. This kind of error does not 
affect the validity of the marriage.' 

109. conditio. Cf. note above. AylifFe includes this with 
impedimentum erroris. Blunt treats it by itself, thus : ' Conditio- 
nonage ; it being not lawful for minors to marry without the 
consent of their parents or guardians. Slavery ; the Theodosian 
code forbade freemen to marry slaves. There is a canon of 
St. Basil prohibiting slaves from marrying without the consent of 
their masters. Several other points may be quoted from the old 
Roman law, such as the regulation by which a widow was forbidden 
to marry within twelve months after her husband's death, and 
a guardian to marry a ward during her minority,' 

112. those seriiitudes are sublatae : 'those conditions of 
servitude are abolished'. 

118. the third is votum : 'a solemn vow of celibacy or 
chastity ', says Blunt. 

120-1. thanks be to discipline. Discipline was often in the 
mouths of the Puritans, as a word for the religious rules governing 
their daily conduct. It denoted, generally, the system by which 
the practice of a church is regulated, as distinguished from its 
doctrine ; specifically, the ecclesiastical polity of the Puritan or 
Presbyterian Church, thence styled Disciplinarians in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries. Two documents of 1561 and 1581, 
constituting the original standards of the polity and government of 
the Reformed Church of Scotland, bear the names of Books of 
Discipline ; cf. N. E. D. 

121. the fourth is cognatio. 'Consanguinity; not only 
certain blood-relationships, but also the spiritual affinities falling 
under this head.' — Blunt. 

123. what the degrees are. The basis for the laws concern- 
ing the degrees is Leviticus 18. Cf. Blackstone, Comni. bk. i. 435 : 
' By Statute 32 Hen. VIII, c. 38, it is declared that all persons may 
lawfully marry, but such as are prohibited by God's law . . . And 
because in the time of popery a great variety of degrees of 
kindred were made impediments to marriage, which impediments 
might, however, be bought off for money, it is declared by the 
same statute that nothing, God's law except, shall impeach any 
marriage, but within the Levitical degrees : the farthest of which is 
that between uncle and niece.' Ibid., bk. 2. 203 ff., defines con- 

S 2 



268 The Silent Woman [act v 

sanguinity ' lineal ' and ' collateral ', and indicates the established 
manner of reckoning ' degrees '. These degrees are restated at 
length 25 Hen. VIII, ch. 22, and 28 Hen. VIII, ch. 7, § 3. 

127. cognatio spiritualis. Maitland, Canon Law in the 
Church 0/ England, p. 91 : 'From 1540 onward the marriage law 
[administered by English ecclesiastical courts] is dictated by an Act 
of Parliament which has at one stroke and with many opprobrious 
words consigned to oblivion vast masses of intricate old canon law 
relating to consanguinity and affinity.' 

129. that comment is absurd, and superstitious. Otter 
probably means ' savoring of Rome '. 

136. the fift is crimen adulterij. 'Adultery, pandary, and homi- 
cide, where one of the accomplices has taken the life of the husband 
or wife to whom he was united in order to marry again.' — Blunt. 

137. the sixt, cultus disparitas. ' Cultus dispariias is mar- 
riage between a Christian and an infidel or heathen. It was 
unanimously denounced by the early Fathers, who based their view 
mainly on two texts from St. Paul's Epistles (i Cor. 8. 39), " only 
in the Lord ", and (2 Cor. 6. 14), " Be not unequally yoked together 
with unbelievers." Marriages between Catholics and heretics are 
forbidden by several canons of the Roman Church as a breach of 
ecclesiastical discipline rather than as null and void.' — Blunt. 

146. the seuenth is, vis. 'Marriage contracted under the 
pressure of fear or violence, the consent of both parties being in 
that case at the most verbally not really obtained.' — Blunt. 

150. the eight is, ordo. 'The compulsory celibacy of the 
priesthood in the Roman Church is thus laid down by the Council 
of Trent : " Si quis dixerit clericos in sacris ordinibus constitutos, 
vel regulares castitatem solemniter professes posse matrimonium 
contrahere, contractumque validum esse, non obstante lege eccle- 
siastica vel voto, anathema sit ". ' — Blunt. 

155. the ninth is, ligamen. Blunt says of this simply, 'A 
previous marriage '. This is equivalent to a prohibition of polygamy. 
But Bishop, Mar. and Div. vol. i, § 112, makes it farther reaching, 
citing in his interpretation Baxter v. Buckley, i Lee, 42,5 Eng. Ec. 
301 ; Lord Campbell in Reg. v. Millis, 10 CI. & F. 534, 763, 784: 
' Perhaps also the antiquated impediment of pre-contract may be 
reckoned as canonical. That was where one of the parties to 
a marriage was under a prior agreement to marry a third person, 



sc. Ill] Notes 269 

but where one of them had already married a third person, but not 
according to the forms required by the ecclesiastical law. There- 
upon the ecclesiastical tribune would compel the celebration in 
due form of the earlier contract, or informal marriage, and pro- 
nounce the other marriage, though the first duly solemnized, void 
from the beginning.' 

158. the tenth is, publico honestas. 'Previous espousal, or 
a previous marriage which has not been consummated.' — Blunt. 
The modifier /«^//<f^ makes it a matter of public policy for the good 
of society. 

160-1. is but leue impedimentum : i. e. one of the canonical 
refinements which made one a relative of his betrothed. 

164. afllnitas ex fornicatione. Perhaps one of the strangest 
impediments to marriage, among all the artificial restrictions 
through which a reader of the old canon must plough his way, is 
this affinity, created among the relatives of one informally or ille- 
gally married to another, 'so that a person guilty of fornication 
could not marry one related to the particeps criminis within 
a certain part of the prohibited degrees'. — Bishop, Mar. and Div. 
vol. I, § 107. 

165. no lesse vera affinitas then the other — than the 
affinity arising from legal marriage, as Cutbeard adds, 1. 167. 

176. the twelfth, and last is, sifortecoire nequibis. Accord- 
ing to Blunt, ' Impos is a ground of nullity because the procreation 
of children, one of the main objects of marriage, is defeated.' Cf. 
Ky\\^Q, Par ergon Juris Canonici Anglicani 22% \ Essex z;. Essex, 
Howell St. Tr., 785. Gifford does not refrain from pointing out 
the similarity between the comic group in this scene and the subject 
of their discussion, and the Essex divorce of 16 13, with the Bishops 
Neal and Andrews as spiritual advisers. In that year the marriage 
of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and his wife, who had been 
Frances Howard, was annulled under the twelfth impediment, and 
the wife married then Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, the favorite 
of King James, upon which followed the infamous poisoning of 
Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower, and the revelation of un- 
heard-of scandals. 

208. You can proue a Will. To prove a will is to establish 
its genuineness and due execution. At this time the ecclesiastical 
courts had jurisdiction not only over questions of marriage and 



270 The Silent Woman [act v 

divorce, but over wills and the administration of estates ; cf. Black- 
stone, Comm., §§ 494-5. Act 20 & 21 Vict. c. 77, called the 
Probate Act, 1857, established the Court of Probate, rendering 
ecclesiastical courts obsolete. 

209. verse of your owne canon. Because Jonson makes use 
of but twelve impediments, and some of the explanatory language 
in the context, I believe he must have had in his hand Thomas 
Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, Supplementum ad Tertiam Partem, 
and have quoted the verse as Aquinas there embodies it with but 
the lines naming twelve impediments, Quaestio 1. Articulus Unicus. 
Conclusio : 

Error, conditio, votum, cognatio, crimen, 
Cultus disparitas, vis, ordo, ligamen, honestas, 
Si sis affinis, si forte coire nequibis, 
Haec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant. 

Other versions of the verse, one quoted by Upton, insert two lines 

before the last of Aquinas's : 

Si parochi et duplicis desit praesentia testis, 
Raptave sit mulier, nee parti reddita tutae. 

It is easy to see why Jonson did not make use of the last 
two impediments, for not only was Epiccene not married 'desit 
praesentia testis ', Cutbeard being present, nor by force ; but to 
add these impossible impediments would have been an anticlimax 
in the fun ; to stop where he did Jonson leaves Morose at the 
pinnacle of embarrassment and disgrace. 

239. diuortij libellum shee will sure haue. Under the eccle- 
siastical law the first pleading, that is, the plaintiff's prayer and 
complaint, is termed the libel. Libellus was originally, in the 
Roman civil law, a little book, and libellus divortii is therefore 
a writing of divorcement. The comic situation is plain : Morose, 
in conceding the point necessary to make his marriage void through 
the twelfth impediment, puts the case out of his own hands into 
those of Epiccene, and she becomes the plaintiff, who has the 
libel against the man as defendant. Then, after her husband's 
public disgrace, she refuses to use the libel — and his torment has 
been for nothing. 



sc. nil] Notes 271 



Act V. Scene III I. 

7. eare-wigs. This unexpected allusion is another example 
of Jonson's love of grotesque images. He finds place for it again 
when Corvino enumerates the materials which a mountebank uses, 
Volp. 2. 3, p. 220 : 

All his ingredients, 
Are a sheep's gall, a roasted bitch's marrow, 
Some few sod earwigs, pounded caterpillars. 

13. wee'll haue our men blanket 'hem i' the hall. A 

favorite mode of punishment, entertaining to the spectators and 
degrading to the victim. Horace — Jonson — is made to undergo it 
in Satiromasiix, p. 246, and it is the sentence passed upon the 
offending tailor in the New Inn 4. 3, p. 384 : 'Host. Let him be 
blanketted. Call up the quarter-master.' 

19. I'lld. An obs. abbreviation, very common at this time, e. g. 
Coriol. 4. I. 58 : ' I'M with thee every foot' ; ibid. 4. 5. 55 : ' I'ld 
have beaten him ' ; ibid. 4. 5. 1 1 1 : ' I'ld not believe them more.' 

22. O, mankind generation ! Generally viankind as an adj. 
means ' mannish '. Cotgrave's ' mankind wild beast ', and Hall's 
* Stripes for the correction of a mankind ass ', quoted by C, need 
a stronger synonym. Cf. Winter's Tale 2. 3. 67 : 'Leon. Out ! A 
mankind witch ! Hence with her ! ' Tivo Angry Women of 
Abington, Haz.-Dods., vol. 7. 319: 'She is mankind; therefore 
thou mayst strike her.' Ralph Roister Doister 4. 8. 25: ' Come 
away; by the matte, she is mankine.' Jonson, Forest 10, vol. 8. 
261 : 'Pallas, nor thee I call on, mankind maid.' I find as late 
as a letter from Leigh Hunt, Recollectiotis 0/ Five Writers, p. 285, 
to Charles C. Clarke : ' I have no pique against the Kembles 
excepting that they were an artificial generation, and their sister, 
with all her superiority, a sort of " mankind woman ", as the old 
writers have it.' 

28. when he list. Why change the subjunc. to ind. as all the 
editors do ? Cf. S. 0/ News 2. i, p. 196 : ' I know his gift, he can 
be deaf when he list.' 

32. had the marks vpon him. The marks of the plague, 
of which a Londoner might rightly stand in fear. 

64. you shall not need. iV^^^used intrans. ; cf. Abbott, § 293. 



!\ 



272 The Silent Woman [act v 

Lyly, Campaspe 2. i : 'It shall not need ' ; Every Man In 3. 2, p. 75 : 
'These ceremonies need not'; Masque of Christmas , vol. 7, 264 : 

Car. Have you ne'er a son at the groom porter's to beg or 
borrow a pair of cards quickly ? 
Game. It shall not need. 

77. whisper the bride. The prep, of indir. obj. after say and 
other similar words was omitted as is now done after tell, ask, Sec. 
Cf. Abbott, § 201. 

84. it doth dirimere contractum, and irritum reddere. The 
first is ' to dissolve the contract ', i. e. divorce the parties ; the 
second ' to render it null ', i. e. set it aside as if it had never existed. 

91. I'll eate no words. ' I will not retract what I have said.' 
Cf. Much Ado ^. I. 29>o: ' Will you not eat your word .'" As Fou 
Like // 5. 4. 155 : 'I will not eat my word, now thou art mine.' 

129. except against 'hem as beaten Knights. The right 
of debarring witnesses comes from the days when causes were 
determined by trial of battle, a method of legal procedure dying 
out in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth, 157 1 a. d. Black- 
stone, Comm. bk. 3, ch. 22, §§ 330 ff., describes the trial, and that 
which constituted victory, either death of one of the champions, 
or if either champion 'proves recreant, that is, yields and pro- 
nounces the horrible word craven, a word of disgrace and obloquy, 
rather than of any determinate meaning. But a horrible word 
it indeed is to the vanquished champion : since as a punishment 
to him for forfeiting the land of his principal by pronouncing that 
shameful word, he is condemned, as a recreant, amittere liheram 
legem, that is, to become infamous, and not to be accounted liber 
at legalis homo; being supposed by the event to be proved for- 
ever foresworn, and therefore never to be put upon a jury or 
admitted as a witness in any cause.' Cf. ibid. 4. 340. Poor 
Amorous and Jack Daw had been defeated before the ladies, 
Act 4. 5, and must take their place as recreants. 

154. studie Ms affliction. Study has the idea of augment, 
' you study his trouble in detail for the purpose of augmenting it '. 
Cf. the use of the verb in Sad Shepherd i. 2, p. 242 : 

Aeg. But I will still study some revenge past this. — 
I pray you give me leave, for I will study. 
Though all the bells, pipes, tabors, timburines ring, 
That you can plant about me ; I will study. 



sc. iiii] Notes 273 

168. that you bee neuer troubled. For be in fut. sense 
cf. Abbott, § 298. 

198. away crocodile. Crocodile has long been a figurative 
word for ' hypocrite ', from the old tradition that crocodiles shed 
tears over their prey before they devour it. So tears, insincere 
ones, are suggested always by the word. Doubtless Epicoene at 
this point did shed tears in simulated grief. Cf. Spenser, Fairie 
Queene i. 5. 18. 4 : 

A cruel craftie crocodile, 
Which in false griefe hyding his harmfuU guile, 
Doth weepe fuUe sore, and sheddeth tender teares. 

Volp. 3. 6, p. 245, Corvino denounces Celia: 

Whore, crocodile, that hast thy tears prepared, 
Expecting, how thou'lt bid them flow. 

Fuller, Worthies, Essex : ' The crocodile's tears are never true.' 
209. for this composition. Cf. Chaucer, Prologue 847 : 

And telle he moste his tale, as was resoun, 
By forward and by composicioun. 

227-8. you haue lurch'd your friends . . . of the garland. 

Cf. Coriol. 2. 2. 105, where Cominius says of the hero : 

His pupil age 
Man entered thus, he waxed like a sea. 
And in the brunt of seventeen battles since 
He lurched all swords of the garland. 

242-3. away you common moths. A figure of which Jonson 
makes use in Underwoods 41, vol. 8. 368 : 

Where dost Thou careless lie 

Buried in ease and sloth ? 
Knowledge, that sleeps, doth die; 
And this security 

It is the common moth. 
That eats on wits and arts, and so destroys them both. 

242-3. their fame suffer ... all ladies honors. Notice that 
the former of the two nouns is singular (meaning here ' reputation ' 
in a good sense), and the second is in the plural. Just below, in 
1. 2^S,/'ame is pluralized. Jonson did thus with abstract nouns 
when he chose. Cf. Lyly, Campaspe 1. 1 : 'If hee saue our honours^, 
it is more than to restore our goods ; and rather do I wish he pre- 
serue our fame than our lines.' 



274 ^^^ Silent Woman [act v, sc. iiii 

244. trauaile to make legs and faces. * Go and travel that 
you may learn to imitate other people's expressions of face and 
manner of bowing.' G. thinks the idea came to Jonson from 
Juvenal's alienum sumere vultum, for the purpose of pleasing one's 
patron. But it seems to me it rather occurred to him in connection 
with such mannerisms as he satirizes 4. 6. 36, &c. Cf. Cyn. Rev. 
3. 2, p. 265, one that ' hath travell'd to make legs, and seen the 
cringe of several courts and courtiers '. Ibid. 2. i, pp. 245 ff. 
Amorphus teaches Asotus to make faces, ' First, for your merchant, 
or city-face . . . then you have your student's or academic face ', 
&c. Mosca, in Volp. 3. i, p. 226, rails at men who 'make their 
revenue out of legs and faces ', and this is more possibly a remi- 
niscence of Juvenal. 

256. at least please him. Fleay suggests that Jonson must 
himself have played this part. Slage, p. 185. 



THE PRINCIPAL COMEDIANS WERE 

Nat. Field. This actor and playwright, born in London in the 
parish of St. Giles Without, Cripplegate, lived 158 7-1 633. His 
father was a Rev. John Field, and from a bill of complaint discovered 
by James Greenstreet, it would seem that the boy had entered the 
company of actors through the influence of Nathaniel Gyies, and 
without his father's consent. Cf. Athen. 2. 203-4. In 1600 he 
was one of the chapel children who brought out Cyn. Rev., and in 
1 601, the Poet. His first recorded part is the hero in Chapman's 
Bussy DAmbois, which was printed in 1607, and he heads the list 
of Queen's Revels Boys in our comedy. Fleay {Dra7n. i. 172) makes 
him a member of the old company under its new name of the Lady 
Elizabeth's Servants. Collier, Slage, 1. 415-17, makes Field a 
member of His Majesty's Players, and he is listed among the 
actors prefixed to the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare. All the notices 
of him as an actor are uniformly in his praise. Jonson thinks he 
merits a place beside the great Richard Burbage in Bar. Fair 5. 3, 

p. 482 : 

Cokes. Which is your Burbage, now? 
Leath. What mean you by that? 
Cokes. Your best actor, your Field ? 



Notes 275 

The D. N. B. cites another criticism in the Short Discourse of the 
English Stage, by Richard Flecknoe : ' In this time were poets and 
actors in their greatest flourish; Jonson and Shakespeare, with 
Beaumont and Fletcher, their poets, and Field and Burbage their 
actors.* 

It is difficult to judge exactly of the extent of Field's work as 
a playwright. He is the sole author of two comedies, A Woman is 
a Weathercock, 161 2, and Amends /or Ladies, 16 18. These maybe 
found in Haz.-Dods. and in the Mermaid Series in the volume Nero 
and other Plays. Field collaborated with Massinger on the Fatal 
Doivry, and Fleay, Dram. i. 171 fF., says he later collaborated 
with Fletcher. There exists a letter from Massinger, Field, and 
Robert Daborne addressed to Henslowe, asking for money to release 
them from imprisonment. Cf. Malone's Shakespeare, Boswell, 3. 

337- 

In the Prologue to Bussy D Avibois he is commemorated as the 
one ' whose action did first give it name ', and Chapman has some 
verses To his Loved Son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman, 
both to be found in Haz.-Dods., vol. 1 1. Jonson, in his Conv., vol. 9. 
379 (1619), said 'Nid Field was his schollar, and he had read to 
him the Satyres of Horace, and some Epigrams of Martiall '. Among 
the commendatory verses gathered by Gifford for his edition will be 
found, vol. I, p. cclii, those of Nat. Field To his worthy and beloved 
friend Master Ben fonson, on his Catiline. The most important 
biographical references are : Dictionary of National Biography ; 
Collier's Preface to his plays, Haz.-Dods. vol. 1 1 ; Collier, History 
of Eng. Dram. Poetry i. 415; Fleay, Dram. i. 171. There is an 
etching of Nathaniel Field, copied from the portrait in the Dulwich 
Gallery, in the volume of the Mermaid Series which contains the 
two plays. 

Gil. Carie. Gifford calls attention to the fact that he, Attawel, 
and Pen are recorded among the principal performers in the dramas 
of Beaumont and Fletcher. Otherwise of him, as of Pen, there is 
nothing known. 

Hvg. Attawel. The D. N. B. is authority for the two facts we 
have of this player, that this reference in Epicoene is the first 
memorandum of him in his profession, and that there is extant 
a funeral elegy by William Rowley upon the death of Hugh Atta- 
well, 'servant of Prince Charles', Sept. 25, 162 1. 



276 The Silent Woman 

loh. Smith. Fate has succeeded in concealing this member of 
the Revels Boys ' by naming him Smith '. 

Will. Barksted. Just when he lived, or what he achieved in 
literature, is not known, but we may judge by the two compositions 
authoritatively ascribed to him, Mtrrha, the Mother of Adonis; or 
Lustes Prodegi'es (1607), and Hiren, or the Faire GreeAe {161 1). 
BuUen, in the Introduction to his edition of Marston, writes, 
p. xlviii : ' The tragedy of The Insatiate Countess was published in 
1 6 13, with Marston's name on the title-page . . . The play was 
reprinted in 1631, and Marston's name is found on the title-page 
of most copies of that edition ; but the Duke of Devonshire possesses 
a copy in which the author's name is given as William Barksteed 
... It is probable he is to be identified with the Wm. Barksted, or 
Backsted, who was one of Prince Henry's players in August 161 1 
(Collier's Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 98), and belonged to the 
company of the Prince Palatine's players in March 16 15-16 (ibid. 
126).' In conclusion, Bullen thinks the play was probably left un- 
finished by Marston, and that Barksted completed it. But, all things 
considered, his biographer in D. N. B. concludes that he was but 
ill-educated, and lacked almost every requirement of a literary 
artist. Fleay gives him brief mention, Dram. i. 29. 

Will. Pen. Cf. supra, Gil. Carie. 

Ric. Allin. The name of this actor is all that survives of him, 
unless he be identical with a boy whose good speaking at the great 
Entertainment when James I entered London caused Dekker to 
leave a record of it. Cf. Dram. Wks. i. 280 : ' In the play Genius 
and Thamesis were the only Speakers : Thamesis being presented 
by one of the children of her Maiesties Reuels; Genius by M. Allin 
(seruant to the young Prince), his gratulatory speech (which was 
deliuered with excellent Action, and a well tun'de audible voyce) 
being to this effect,' &c. The M. may, of course, stand for Master, 
as in Epiccene 3. 6. 79. The Kings Entertainment was March 15, 
1603, and Allin might have become a member of the company 
before our play in i62§. 

Master of Revells. The origin of the office is sketched by 
Stow: 'At the feast of Christmas in the King's court, wherever 
he chanced to reside, there was appointed a lord of misrule, or 
master of merry disports ; the same merry fellow made his appear- 
ance at the house of every nobleman and person of distinction, and 



Notes 277 

among the rest the lord mayor of London and the sheriffs had 
severally of them their lord of misrule . . . This pleasant potentate 
began his rule at All-Hallows eve, and continued the same till the 
morrow after the feast of the Purification ; in which space there 
were fine and subtle disguisings, masks, and mummeries.' These 
early ' lords ' or • masters ' had as their first duty to provide mirth 
and jollity for holiday occasion. But the office developed into one 
in which the holder had no longer to provide, but to select and 
control the entertainment, 

' The appointment in 1546 ', says Ward in his Ung. Dram. Lit., 
' of Sir Thomas Cawarden as Magister loconwi Revellorum et 
Mascorum at Court was possibly neither the first of its kind nor one 
in which the censorial functions were predominant. Nor does the 
"wise gentleman and learned" George Ferrers, who in 1551 
became "master of the pastimes" of King Edward VI, appear 
to have owed his appointment to his political so much as to his 
literary and dramaturgical abilities, which, although a Protestant, he 
was afterwards found ready to devote alike to the services of Queen 
Mary.' 

In Jonson's time Edmund Tilney held the office from July 24, 
1579, until 1608, when he retired, to be followed by his deputy 
Sir George Buc, historian and poet, whose first duty seems to have 
been performed on Oct. 4, 1608, when he licensed Middleton's 
A Mad World my Masters ; Sir John Astley was granted a reversion 
of the office Apr. 3, 1612, and Jonson on Oct. 5, 1621. So when 
Buc retired, in 1621, it went to Astley as holder of the earliest re- 
version. His patent was made out May 2, 1622. That Jonson 
was eager to be ' Master of the Revels ' we glean from Satiromastix, 
p. 231: 'Master Horace, let your witte inhabite in your right 
places ; if I fall sansomely vpon the Widdow, I haue some cossins 
German at Court, shall beget you the reuersion of the Master of 
the King's Reuels, or else be his Lord of Misrule now at Christmas.' 

But the office never came to him ; Sir John Astley lived two years 
longer than he, dying Jan. 1639-40, and having as his deputy many 
years before his death Sir Henry Herbert. Cf. Malone's Shaks., 
Boswell, 3. 57 note. 



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An English Garner. Birmingham, 1888. 

English Reprints. Westminster, 1895. 

Aronstein, Philipp. Ben Jonson's Theorie des Lustspiels. 

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T 3 



GLOSSARY 



Reference to the text is by act, scene, and line. Obsolete words 
are marked t, archaic t, technical or unnaturalized words ||. 



Afprep., ton : i. 4. 50 ; in the act 
of: 5. 2. 27. [OE. on, as used 
still in asleep, afoot.] Cf. Abbott, 
§§24, 140. 

Absolute, adj., perfect: 3. 6. 41, 
4. I. 131. 

Abuse, n., tdeceit, imposture: 
4. 5- 64. 

Abuse, v., tto impose upon, cheat, 
deceive : 3. 3. 45, 4. 7. 29, 5. 4. 

153- 

Acknowledging, ppl. adj., tgrate- 
ful : 3. 3. 8. 

Act, v., to gesticulate: 4. i. 43. 
(Cf. note.) 

Admirably, adv., t marvel ously, 
wonderfully : 4. 5. 4. 

Adulteries, n., tadulterations, 
corruptions: i. I. 102. 

Aequiuocate, v. i., to evade by 
equivocation. Jonson's use of 
the word is absolute, or intransi- 
tive, which N.E.D. and Century 
do not recognize except in the 
sense of ' to use words of doubt- 
ful signification ' : 4. 2. 36. 

AfiFeet, v., tto aim at, aspire to : 
2' 5- 55> 75 ; used with to do : 
2. 2. 25 ; to be fond of, to like, 
to love: 5. 2. 6, 18. 

Affection, n., tdisposition : 2. 5. 
16 ; t feeling as opposed to 
reason, passion : 4. 4. 178 ; //. 
goodwill, love: 5. i. 49. 

Afore, adv., % of time previously, 
before : 2. 4. 32 ; of place in 
front, in advance : 2. 4. 1 16, 118. 
Still used in nautical language. 



Allegation, n. (Law), the asser- 
tion, declaration, or statement 
of a party of what he can prove : 
4. 7. 15- 

And, conj., if: 2. 3. i, 2. 4. 9, 
3. 2. 80, 87 ; an' : 2. 4. 92, 132 ; 
even if, although : 4. 4. 12. 

Angel, n., an English coin at first 
known as angel-noble, being a 
new issue of the noble with the 
device of the archangel Michael 
standing upon and piercing the 
dragon. Its value on being 
issued (1465) by Edward IV 
was 6^. Zd.; in i Henry VIII, 
7 J. ^d. ; 34 Henry VIII, %$. 6d. ; 
6 Edward VI, los. It was last 
coined by Charles 1 : 3. 4. i. 

Appellation, n. (Law), tthe act of 
appealing from a lower to a 
higher court or authority against 
the decision of the former : 4. 7. 

IS- 

Appoint, v., Ito make an appoint- 
ment for a meeting (with a per- 
son as direct obj.) : 2. 6. 5. 

Argument, n., tsubject-matter of 
a discussion or discourse in 
speech or writing: i. I. 8. 

Arras, ti., tapestry hangings, so 
called because made in the town 
of Arras, Artois : 4. 5. 34. 

Article, n. (Law), division of a 
written or printed document or 
agreement: i. i. 30, 4. i. 18. 

tAssassinate, n., assault with 
intent to murder : 2. 2. 49. Cf. 
N, E. D. for the use of this 



Glossary 



285 



word under I ; the noun some- 
times meant the person attempt- 
ing murder. 

Assure, v., +to secure or make 
sure the possession or reversion 
of ; to convey property by deed : 
5. 4. 182. 

At, prep., to: 3. 5. 77,, 74. Cf. 
Abbott, § 143. 

Attachment, n. (Law), taking 
into the custody of the law the 
person or property of one already 
before the court, or of one whom 
it is sought to bring before it ; 
a writ for the accomplishment 
of this purpose : 4. 7. 16. 

Attone, V. +(tr. with a personal 
object), to set at one, to bring 
into accord : 4. 5. 163. 

Audacious, adj., confident, in- 
trepid : 2. 5. 32. 

tAuthenticall, adj., real, actual, 
genuine : 3. 2. 28. 

Author, «., t instigator, autho- 
rizer, prompter: i. 2. 9, 11. 

Aziire, n. (Her.), the blue color 
in coats of arms, represented in 
engraving by horizontal lines : 
I. 4. 41. 

Bait, n., refreshment, slight re- 
past : I. 3. 43. Century gives 
this word as still colloquial in 
provincial England. 

Balle, n., a spherical piece of 
soap : 3. 5. 75. 

Band, n., the neck-band or collar 
of a shirt, originally used to 
make it fit closely, later ex- 
panded for ornamentation. In 
l6th century synonymous with 
ruif, in the 1 7th with the drooping 
collar which gradually took the 
place of its stiffly - starched, 
'stand-up' predecessor : 3.1.42. 

Banquet, n., +a slight repast 



between meals ; sweetmeats, 
dessert : i. 3. 41. 

Barbary, n., fa Barbary horse, 
a barb: 4. i. 102. 

Bare, adj. or adv., Jwith head 
uncovered : 3. 3. 75. 

Bason, n., basin : 3. 5. 86. 

Bate, v., to make a reduction in, 
to lessen : 3. 4. 45. \ 

Battell, «., a fight between two 
persons : 4. 2. 108. 

Baud, n., pander : 2. 2. 131. Both 
masc. and fem. before 17th 
century ; after that time always 
fem. Of uncertain origin j 
earliest example is in Piers 
Plowman, 1362, where one MS. 
reads Bawdstrot. 

Bayes, n., the crown of laurel or 
bay worn as a reward by con- 
queror or poet, used figuratively 
for fame : PROL. 3. 

Beare-w^ard, n., the keeper of a 
bear, who leads it about to ex- 
hibit its tricks: i. i. 176, 4. 2. 
log. 

Because, conj., tin order that : 
4. 5. 274. 

fBedpheere, n., a bedfellow : 
2. 5. 49. [OE. gefera, com- 
panion, fellow.] 

Beg, V. t(tr. with impersonal 
direct obj.), to beg a person 
meant to petition the Court 
of Wards (established by 
Henry VIII and suppressed 
under Charles II) for the cus- 
tody of a minor, heiress, or 
idiot, as feudal superior or as 
having interest in the matter : 
2. 2. 45, 4. 7. 5. N. E. D. does 
not recognize the use of the 
impers. dir. obj., but it seems to 
have been common. Cf. note, 
4. 7. 5- 

Bell-man, «., a man employed to 



286 



The Silent Woman 



go about the streets at night as 

a watchman : I. I. 1 66. 
Benefit, n., Jkindness, favor : 

2. 4. 20, 22, 3. 7. 30. 
JBeshrew, v., used only as here 

in the imperative with the force 

of an imprecation, ' Evil befall ' : 

2. 6. 29. 
Biggen, n., a child's cap. Here 

figuratively as the sign of 

infancy : 3. 6. 82. 
Blanket, v., to toss in a blanket 

as a rough punishment: 5. 4. 

13- 

Bodies, n., a variant of bodice 
from the original plur. a pair 
of bodies, meaning ' a pair of 
stays '. Formerly always treated 
as a plur. even with spelling 
bodice, and originally referring 
to the part of a dress covering 
the body as distinct from the 
arms: 2. 5. ']']. 

Boy, «., page: i. l. i. Cf. note. 

Brake, n. Cf. note, 4, 6. 27. 

Brasier, «., one who works in 
brass : i. i. 158. 

Braue, adj., Jsplendid, capital: 
2. 2. 24, 4. 5. 231, 5. 4. 59. 

Brauely, adv., ^worthily, well : 
4. I. 12, 5.3. 12. 

Brauery, «., tgallant, beau : i. i. 
78, I. 3. 30, 2. 3. 55, 2.4. 120; 
ostentation, finery : 4. 6. 6. 

Brauo, n., a bravado, a swagger- 
ing fellow: 3. 6. 112. [Ital. 
bravo. Earliest English usage, 

1597. n.e.d:\ 

Bricke-bat, n., a fragment of 
brick: 2. i. 12. 

Bride-ale, n., a wedding-feast : 
2. 6. 32 ; brideale : 3. 6. 73 ; 
bridall : 4. 5. 48. [OE. bryd- 
ealo, literally ' wedding-ale '. 
The analytical form with the 
stress on the ale never died out. 



Very commoner. 1600; still used 

as an historical term.] 
Brief, adj., ^to be brief means to 

be expeditious or hasty : 5. 4. 29. 
Briefly, adv., tsoon, at once : 

3. 2. 18, 4. 5. 237, 5. 3. 76. 
tBrown baker, n., a baker of 

brown bread : 2. 5. 120. 

Buckle, v., tto fasten up in any 
way : i. i. 146. 

By, adv., near, ready — in com- 
mand stand by: 2. i. 29, 4. 5. 
302. 

By and by, adv., +at once, im- 
mediately: 4. 5. 345. 

tCalliuer, «., a light kind of 
musket: 4. 5. no. Cf. note. 

Carpet, n., +a thick fabric worked 
into covers for tables, beds, &c. : 

4- 5- 253- 
Carriage, n., Jmanner of con- 
ducting oneself socially : 2. 5. 

51, 5-3-5I- 
Cast, n., the number of hawks 
cast off at a time ; a couple : 

4. 4. 192. 

Cast, v., +to anticipate, forecast : 
4.5.214. 

Casuist, n., a theologian or other 
person who studies and resolves 
cases of conscience, or questions 
of duty and conduct : 4. 5. 4. 

Catch, n., song, originally a short 
composition for three or more 
voices, which sing to the same 
melody, the second singer be- 
ginning the first line as the first 
goes on to the second, and so 
with each successive singer : 
3. 4. 10. 

Censure, v. i., tto judge ; to give 
an opinion : Dedic. 16. 

Certificate, n. (Law), a writing 
made in any court, and properly 
authenticated, to give notice 



Glossary 



287 



that a fact has or has not taken 
place : 4. 7. 15. 

Chance-medlee, n. (Law), acci- 
dent or casualty not purely acci- 
dental, but of a mixed charac- 
ter, chiefly in manslaughter by 
chance-medley ^ for which later 
writers use chatice-medley itself. 
— Cowel: 3. 5. 117. 

Charge, «., theed, attention : 2. 
2. 98 ; pi. expense ; 5. 4. 209. 

tChina house, «., a place where 
Chinese merchandise was ex- 
hibited: I. 3. 38, 4. 3. 24. Cf. 
note, I. 3. 38. 

tChina-woman, «., the owner or 
keeper of a china-house : 1.4.26. 

tChristen-name, «., Christian 
name, the name given at 
christening: I. 3. 45. 

Circumstance, «., J ceremony, 
ado : 2. 5. 55 ; pi. details : 5. 3. 
44. 

Citation, n. (Law), the production 
of or reference to the text of 
acts of legislatures, treatises, 
&c., in order to support pro- 
positions advanced: 4. 7. 15. 

+Citie-\vire, «., a woman of 
fashion : PROL. 23. 

Citterne, n., Jcithern, an instru- 
ment of the guitar kind, strung 
with wire, played with a plec- 
trum, very popular in l6th and 
17th centuries ; modern zither : 
3- 5- 62. 

llClogdogdo, «. Cf. note, 4. 2. 75. 

tCoacted, ppl. adj., enforced, 
compulsory: 3. 4. 54. 

Coate, n. (Her.), coat-of-arms, 
escutcheon : 1.4. 40. 

Collier, «., a man engaged in the 
coal trade ; a term of reproach : 
3.5- 116. 

Comely, a^'., appropriate, proper : 
2. I. 21. 



Comment, n. 'Sometimes it is 
taken to be a lie or feigned 
tale' (Bullokar, 1616; also in 
Cockeram, 1623). [L. cojn- 
inentum\ : 5. 4. 55. 

Comming, ppl. adj., tinclined to 
meet advances, complaisant : 
5. I. 78. 

Commoditie, n., ta quantity of 
goods sold on credit to a person 
wishing to borrow money from 
a usurer, and resold immediately 
for some cash at a lower price : 

1. 4. 69, 2. 5. 118. 
Companion, n., tfellow, used as 

a term of contempt: 2. 2. 19, 
5. 4. 5, 154. 

Compendious, adj., texpeditious, 
direct: 2. i. i. 

Composition, n., t constitution of 
body: 2. 5. 17 ; ta mutual agree- 
ment or arrangement between 
two parties, a contract : 5. 4. 
209. 

Conceipt, «., tpersonal or private 
opinion : 4. 5. 264. 

Conceited, ppl. adj., t clever, 
witty: 2. 5. 57. 

Conceiue, v., to grasp with the 
mind (of a thing;]:) : 2. 5. 5, 9, 
1 2, passim. 

Condition, n., tcharacter, dis- 
position: 2. 5. 15; provision: 

2. 4- 45, 137. 

Confound, v., to discomfit in 
argument, to silence : i. 2. 60. ■ 

Conscience, n., consciousness, 
internal conviction : 2. 5. 58. 

Consent, n., +agreement, accord : 
4. 6. 103. 

Contayne, v., tto keep under 
control (of the mind) : 5. 3. 49, 

Contempt, n., action of con- 
demning; tin//.: 4. 5. 68. 

Content, ppl. adj., agreed, used 
in exclamations: 2.4.;i58,5.4. 16. 



288 



The Silent Woman 



Content, v., tto please, delight : 
PROL. 2. 

Conuayance, n. (Law), the trans- 
fer of the title of property from 
one person to another : 2. 2. 
142. 

Conuiction, n. (Law), that legal 
proceeding of record which 
ascertains the guilt of the party 
and upon which the sentence 
or judgment is founded : 4. 7. 
16. 

Correspondence, «., t relation 
between persons or communi- 
ties ; usually qualified as good, 
friendly, &c. : 3. 3. 87. 

Cosen, «., a relative (cousin) : 
2. 2. 103 ; cosin, 3. 2. \Z,passi7n. 

Cosen, v., to cheat : 2. 2. 43, 86, 
passi77i. 

t Costard-monger, «., a street 
vender of fruits: i. I. 155 
(costard, apple). 

Countenance, «., bearing, de- 
meanor : 4. 6. 76. 

Course, «., tcharge, onset ; bout, 
encounter: 4, 2. 9, 145. 

llCourtlesse, adj., wanting in 
courtliness : 2. 5. 30. N. E. D. 
and Cefiiury have no record of 
the word elsewhere used. 

Courtling, n., a gentleman of the 
court: 4. I. 131. An unusual 
word to which Jonson always 
attaches a disparaging meaning. 
Cf. Cyft. Rev. 5. 2, p. 316, Epi- 
grams 52, 72. 

Crowne, 7t., an English coin, gold 
or silver, worth five shillings, 
first coined by Henry VIII in 
gold, in imitation of the French 
ecu au so lei I of Louis XII or 
Francis I. Since Edward VI 
it has existed in silver : 1.4. 57. 

Cumber, n., i trouble, distress: 
5. 4- 189. 



Cunning woman, n., tfortune- 
teller, conjurer: 2. 2. 127. 

Curious, n., tcareful, studious : 
4. I. 38. [L. curiostis.] 



Damasque, n., a rich cloth, manu- 
factured originally at Damascus, 
very fashionable in James I's 
time : 3. 2. 68. 

Decline, v., tto avert : 2. 2. loi. 

Delicate, adj., fdainty, fine (of 
horses) : i, 4. 5, 2. 4. 103, 3. i. 
24. 

Demand, v., tto ask (dir. obj. 
the person, ind. obj. the thing) : 

3. 2. 22. 

Desperate, adj., tirretrievable, 

irreclaimable : 2. 5. 50. 
Desperately, adv., excessively : 

4. 2. 46. 

Deuis'd, /^/. adj'., invented, con- 
trived: 2. 2. 148. 
Diet, n., tboard : 2. 5. I08. 
Discontentment, n., tdisplea- 

sure, vexation: 4.4. 181. 
Discouer, v., J to reveal, make 

known: 1.1.110,121,5.4.250; 

to find out : 3. 3. 7. 
Discourse, n., tconversational 

power: 5. i. 40; conversation: 

2. I. 4, 2. 4. 86, passitn. 
Discourse, v., +to tell, narrate 

(with direct obj. of the thing) : 

4. 5. 246. 
Disease, n., fault : i. i. 57 ; 

eccentricity : I. I. 149, 3. 6. 66. 
Disfurnish, v., to deprive of: 

4. 6. 48. 
Dispence, v. i., to excuse, pardon 

(used with the prep, wil/i) : 

I. 4. 12. 
Doctrine, n., tdiscipline ; lesson, 

precept: 2. i. 28. 
tDor, n., scoff, mockery ; used as 

a light imprecation : 2. 3. 45 ; 



Glossary 



289 



to give the dor to, to make 
game of: 3. 3. 26. 

Dote, n., natural gift or endow- 
ment (usually^/.) : 2, 3. 100. 

Doublet, n., fa close-fitting body- 
garment, with or without sleeveS) 
worn by men from the 14th to 
the 1 8th centuries ; rarely 
applied to women's garments 
of the same sort : of tnen's, 2. 2. 
68, 3. I. 53 ; of women's, 3. 2. 76. 

Dressing, n., artificial aid to good 
looks ; cosmetics, &c.: i. 1.105, 

4. I. Z7, 104. 

Drone, v., tto smoke: 4. i. 66. 
Cf. note. ' 

Eare-wig, n., an insect, Forficula 
auriadaria, so called from the 
notion that it penetrates into 
the head through the ear : 

5. 4. 7. 

Eater, n., t a menial, servant : 

3- 5- 33- 
Election, n,, discrimination : 4. 7. 

47. 

1 1 Elephantiasis, n., a name given 
to various kinds of cutaneous 
diseases which cause the skin 
to resemble an elephant's hide : 
5- 3- 184. 

Enable, v., tto empower, qualify : 
5. 4. 218. 

tEngle, n., catamite : i. i. 25. 

Ensigne, n., X token, sign : 3. 6. 
72. 

Entire, adj., tdevoted, intimate : 
2. 4. 43. 

Entreat, v., to invite: i. i. 176, 
1. 4. 8, 3. 3. 1 14, 4. 5. A,T,passitn ; 
intreat : 2. 5. 2, 4. 4. 76. This 
word Jonson uses constantly in 
the exaggerated speech of the 
court. 

Entreaty, n., treception, enter- 
tainment : PROL. II. 



Epithalamium, n., a nuptial song 
or poem in praise of the bride 
and bridegroom, and praying 
for their prosperity : 3.6.91,93. 

Erection, n., texaltation : 4. 6. 79. 

Errandst,«<^'.(tvariantofarra«/), 
thorough-going, unmitigated : 4. 
5.69. 

Estate, n., ta condition of exist- 
ence, physical or social: 3. 4. 
47, 4. 5. 2%, passim. 

tEstrich, n., ostrich : 4. I. 50. 

Example, «., precedent : Dedic. 6. 

Except against, to take exception 
to : 5. 4. 129. 

Excursion, n., digression, devia- 
tion {upon words) : 5. 3. 75. 

Execution, n. (Law), in civil 
actions, is the mode of obtaining 
the debt or damages or other 
thing recovered by the judg- 
ment ; it is either for the plaintiff 
or defendant. For the plaintiff 
upon a judgment in debt, the 
execution is for the debt and 
damages, for the goods, or 
their value, and costs: 2. 5. 106, 
4. 5- 18. 

Exercise, n., a recreative employ- 
ment, a pastime: 4. 4, 103. 

Exhibition, tz., maintenance, 
support : 3. I. 59 (cf. late L. ex- 
hibitio et tegumentum, food and 
raiment). 

Expect, V. i., tto wait : 5. 3. 145 ; 
V. /., tto wait for, await : 5. 3. 37. 

Expi'esse, v. i. for reflex, use, to 
put one's thoughts into words : 
3. 2. 26. 

Extemporall, adj., textempo- 
raneous : 2. 3, 10. 

tFacinorous, adj., infamous, vile : 
2. 2, 54. This very common 
word in 17th-century usage 
Cooper defines as 'full of 



290 



The Silent Woman 



naughtie actes ; wicked ; un- 
gracious '. [L.facinorosus,'\ 

Fain, v., •\fortn of feign : AN- 
OTHER 10, 2. 4. II ; faign: 
2. 2. 102; faine: i. i. 21, 3. 2. 
"J"], passim. 

Fame, «., reputation, good or bad : 
Dedic. 14, 4. 6. 32, 5. 4. 242, 
248 ; report: 5. 2. 61. 

Family, n., tthe household, ser- 
vants of the house : 4. i. li. 

Far fet, adj., far-fetched : PROL. 
21. 

Fauoiir, n., tleave, permission : 
2. 4. 88, 3. 2. 87, 5. 3. 87. 

Festiuall, adj., tglad, merry : 
2. 4. 119. 

Fift, adj., fifth: 5. 3. 136. The 
normal form fift still survives 
in dialects ; the standard form, 
which first appeared in the 
14th century, is due to analogy 
^\\h fourth. [O^.fifta.l 

Flock-bed, n., a bed filled with 
flocks: 2. I. II. [OY.fioc, lock 
of wool.] 

For you, prep, phr., with you, 
ready to act with you : I. 3. 12, 
2. 6. 21. Cf. Abbott, § 155. 

Foresaid, adj., aforesaid : 4.2.76. 

Forsooth, adv., tin truth, truly : 
4. 4. 122. 

Fortune, n., pure chance : 2. 4. 
73> 74, 3- 4- 3- [h.fortuna, re- 
lated to forti-,fors, chance, and 
ferre, to bear. A^. E. Z?.] 

Foule, «(/;■., ugly : i . i . 1 1 5 , 2. 2. 69. 

Free, v., tto absolve, to acquit: 
Dedic. 14. 

Frequent, adj., tabundant : 4. i. 

59- 
Fright, v., to frighten : 2. 5. 98, 

III, 4. 5. 220 MN., 4. 7. 13. 
"Fvova., prep., apart from: i. I. 

7y. Cf. Abbott, § 158. 
!|Fucus, 7t., paint or cosmetic for 



beautifying the skin : 2. 2. 140. 
[L./z^iTz^j, rock-lichen, red dye, 
rouge ...N.E. E>.] 
tFurder, adv., further : 4. 5. 40. 

+ Galley-foist, n., a state barge, 
esp. as here, the one used upon 
the Lord Mayor's Day, when 
he was sworn into his office at 
Westminster. * A foist, a light 
galley that hath about 16 or 
18 oares on a side, and two 
rowers to an oare.' — Cotgrave : 
4. 2. 127. 

Gamester, n., gambler ; merry, 
frolicsome person : 1.4.23,3.1. 

37- 

Genius, n., a good spirit presiding 
over a man's destiny : 2. 4. 76. 

Gentlenesses, n. pi., elegancies : 
4. I. 52. This seems a unique 
instance of the word. 

Gird, n., J a gibe, taunt : 2. 5. 48. 

tGods so, interj., variant of 
Gadso, after oaths beginning 
with God's. Gadso is a variation 
of Catso through false connec- 
tion with other oaths beginning 
with God. Gad is minced pro- 
nunciation for God'. 2. 4. loi, 
4. 2. 27. 

Godwit, n., a marsh bird, genus 
Limosa, formerly of great repute 
for the table. In i6th and 
17th centuries used to render 
L. Attager, Spanish Francoli7i : 
I. 4. 46. 

Goe away, tto die : 4. I. 20. 

Grace, n., fto do grace, to reflect 
credit : 3. 6. 26 ; to do a favor : 

4- 3- 31- 
Graft, V. i., tto give horns to, to 

cuckold : 3. 6. 108. Cf. note 

under hor7ies, 3. 6. 109. 
tGroates- worth, n., as much as 

is bought or sold for a groat; 



Glossary 



291 



a small amount. The English 
groat was coined in 135 1-2, 
valued at fourpence. In 1662 
it was withdrawn from circula- 
tion, and not afterwards coined 
under that name : 4. 4. 107, &c. 

Groome, n., ta man-servant : 2. 2. 
15,108,3.6.107,4.3.23,5.4.11. 

Guift, n. (tform oi gift) : 3. 6. 87. 

Guilder, n. (tform oi gilder), one 
who practises gilding as an art 
or trade : i. i. 120. 

Gules, n., gullet : 4. 5. 326 ; 
(Her.) red, the heraldic color 
represented in engraving by 
vertical lines: 1. 4.41. [h.gula.\ 

Ha', V. (have), J to take, convey : 
2. 2. 151 ; (as auxiliary verb) 
4. 5. 234. 

Habit, n., J dress: 4. i. 119. 

Halberd, n., a weapon borne, 
up to the close of the i8th 
century, by all sergeants of 
posts, artillery, and marines, 
and by companies of halberdiers 
in various regiments. It was 
a strong wooden shaft six feet 
in length, surmounted by an 
instrument much resembling a 
bill-hook, for cutting and thrust- 
ing, with a cross-piece of steel 
less sharp for the purpose of 
pushing ; one end of the cross- 
piece was turned down as a 
hook, used in tearing down 
works : 4. 5. 109. 

Halfe-erovvne, n., a silver coin 
of Great Britain, of the value of 
two shillings and sixpence : 3. 
1.36. 

tHappely, adv., Jhaply, by hap 
or chance: 2. 5. 22. 

Harken, v., tto search by in- 
quiry (used with the preps, otit or 
after): 1.1.34,1.2.24,4.1.133. 



tHart, inter j., Heart ! an oath 
equivalent to God's heart! It 
is found also as Ods heart, 
'j heart/ : i. 3. 50. 

Hau'-boye, n. (haut-boy), a 
wooden double-reed wind in- 
strument of high pitch, having 
a compass of about two and 
a half octaves forming a treble 
to the bassoon ; modern oboe ; 
here used for the player: i. i. 
163. 

Heicfar, n. (t variant of heifer), 
wife : 2. 5. 68. [OE. heahfore, 
heahfru, -fre, of obscure etymo- 
logy.— iV. E. D.] Cf. note. 

'Hem., pro. pi. them: 4. 5. 241, 
244, 246, passim. Cf. Cent. 
Diet, under He, I, D, c : Obj. 
(dat.) hem\ emf 'em. Common 
in early Mod. E., in which it 
came to be regarded as a contr. 
of the equiv. them, and was 
therefore in the seventeenth 
century often printed 'hem, 
'em. [OE. him, heom ; ME. 
hem, ham, heom, &c.] 

Herald, n., trumpeter, an- 
nouncer of official news : 3. 7. 
42. 

Hermaphroditieall, adj., of both 
sexes ; i. I. 81. 

Hilts, n. pi. used for sing, hilt : 
4. 5. 310. 

Hobby-horse, «.,ta foolish fellow, 
a buffoon : 4. 3. 55. 

Hold, ^'., tto wager, bet : 1.3.50; 
J to restrain oneself, forbear: 
4. 2. 97. 

Honest, '\v., to confer honor 
upon, to honor : i. 4. 2. 

tHorse-meat, n., food for horses : 
3. I. 40. 

Humour, n., caprice, 3. I. 12 ; 
eccentricity : 4. 4. 169 ; dis- 
position : 5. I. 78. 



292 



The Silent Woman 



Hunting-match, n., fa hunt 
taken part in by a number of 
persons : i. i. 34. 

I, interj. (tform of aye)^ yes : i. 
I. 47, I. 2. 18, I. 2. 75, I. 3. 28, 
passim. 

Idly, a«?y., tdeliriously, 4. 4. 55. 

lerkin, n., a garment for the 
upper part of the body worn by 
men in the i6th and 17th cen- 
turies, sometimes synonymous 
with doublet : I. 4. 60. 

Impaire, n., impairement: 2. 5. 
50. 

Impertinencie, «., irrelevancy ; 
impertinence : 4. 4. 35, 5. 3. 58, 
85. 

Impulsion, «., incitement : 2. i. 
29. 

Incommoditie, n., tinjury, dam- 
age : 2. 4. 14. 

tingine, n., native talent ; artful 
contrivance : 4. 6. 47. Obs. 
since the middle of the 17th 
century. [Lat. iftgenm?nl\ 

Innocent, tan idiot: i. 2. 54, 

3- 4- 39- 

Instruct, v., tto appoint ; to 
guide : 4. 4. i. 

Instrument, n., (Law), a writing 
which gives formal expression to 
a legal act, or agreement, as 
bonds and wills: 3. I. 32. 

Insult, V. i., +to vaunt, to triumph; 
3. 7. 16. 

Intelligence, «., tidings (a state 
term used in affectation) : 2. 5. 
72, 3. 3. 86. 

tintergatorie, «., tform of inter- 
rogatory: 4. 7. 16; pi. (Law), 
material and pertinent ques- 
tions in writing, to necessary 
points exhibited for the examina- 
tion of witnesses or persons who 
are to give testimony in the case. 



Intestate, n. (Law), without a 

will : 4. 4. 53. 
It, pro., he, she : 2. 6. 6, 4. 5. 280 ; 

poss. pron., his : 2. 5. 107, 109, 

III, 113, 116, 117. 
lumpe, V, i., tto agree : 2. 5. 42. 
lust, adj., exact : 2. 5. 25. Cf. 

Abbott, § 14. 

Kastril, n., a species of small 
hawk, Falco tinnunculus, or 
Tinminculiis alaudarius, re- 
markable for its habit of sus- 
taining itself in the same place 
in the air with its head to the 
wind ; applied to persons with 
contemptuous force : 4. 4. 192. 

Knaue, n., jocularly used with- 
out unpleasant connotation as 
fellow, rogue: 2. 5. 19; tser- 
vant : 2. 2. II, 3. 4. 51. Forthe 
history of this word, and its 
obsolete uses, cf. W. and their 
Ways, p. 286. 

Lace-woman, «., a woman who 
works or deals in lace : 2. 5. 71. 
tLarum, n., alarm : 4. 2. 101. 
Lasting, n., endurance : 2. 5. 45. 
Latine, v., to interlard with Latin : 

2. 6. 26, 53. 

Leash, «., a brace and a half, or 
set of three, originally used in 
sporting language: 3. 2. 78. 

Leg, in phrase io make a leg, to 
bow : 2. I. MN., 5. 4. 244. 

Lie (lye), v. i., tto lodge, to 
dwell: 1.2. 57, 59,4. 2. 137, 5. 

I.7S- 

fLinnener, n., a linen draper ; 
shirt-maker ; dealer in hnen 
goods : 2. 5. 70, 4. I. 105. 

Lock, n., a lovelock : 3. 5. 70, 4. 

6.39. 
Looke, V. i., to stare ; to glare : 

3. 4. 41, 4. 3. 3. 



Glossary 



293 



Loose, v., to lose, to waste : i. I. 

67, I. 2. 4. 
Lotium, n., lotion: 3. 5. 88. 

Century does not recognize the 

form. 
Lurch, v., J to swindle, cheat 

(with a dir. obj. of the person) : 

5. 4. 227. 

M., abbreviation for Master : 3. 
6.79. 

Madrigall, n., a mediaeval poem 
or song, amorous, pastoral, or 
descriptive : 2. 3. 23, 138, 2. 4. 
94, 4. 5. 123. 

Make, 7/., +to do ; to be occupied 
or busied with : 4. 3. 5, 4. 7. I ; 
to make possible the fact that : 
Dedic. 10. 

Managing, n., management, di- 
rection : 4. 5. 84. 

Mandrake, «., mandragora, a 
poisonous plant, which acts as 
emetic, purgative, and narcotic : 

4. 2, 91. [OE. draca from L. 
draco?^ Cf. note. 

Mankind, adj., mannish : 5. 4. 22. 
tMannage, n., management : 3. 

4.2. 
Mannikin, n., a little man, a 

pigmy : I. 3. 26. 
+Mar'l, n. (marvel), a wonder : 

3- I- 43- 

Marshall, v., to usher: i. 3. 53. 

tMary, interj., the name of the 
Virgin Mary, involved in oaths ; 
marry; indeed: i. i. 152, 
passim. 

Master, «., a title of address now 
changed to Mister: i. i. 178, 
1.2. 5, passim ; abbrev. to M. : 
3. 6. 79; to Mr.: 3. 2. 21. 

Matter, n., material (used of 
persons) : 4. i. 59 ; question 
under discussion : 5. 3. 17, 32, 

5. 4. 245. 



Measure, «., moderation : 4. i. 51. 
Meat, n., tfood : PROL. 17, 27, 

1. 3. 56, 2. 6. 35, 3. 3. 64, 81. 
Melaneholique, adj., J gloomy, 

melancholy : 2. 4. 139, 148. 

Melancholy, n., melancholia, in- 
sanity : 4. 4. 58. 

Mercer, n., a dealer in cloths, 
esp. silks : 2. 2, 112. 

Minion, n., ta favorite, a darling : 

3. 5-31. 

Minister, n., agent, servant: 4. 

4.7. 
Moneth, n. (tform of month) : 

2, 2. 138, 2. 4. 40. 

More, adj., fgreater (in sense of 

size or importance) : i. 2. 20, 

3- 7. 19- 
Motion, n., fa puppet ; a puppet 

show: 3. 4. 38; tendency of 

desire or passion : 2. 5. 28 ; 

a proposal : 4. 5. 236. 
Mouthe, n., a servant : 3. 5. 33. 

A sense not recognized by the 

dictionaries. 
Mulct, v., tto punish : 3. 4. 17. 
Muse, V. i., tto wonder, to be 

astonished : 2. 3. 100, 3. 4. 2. 
Mushrome, n. (mushroom), an 

upstart : 2. 4. 153. 
Mutine, v. i., to mutiny : i. 3. 20. 

Neat, adj., tspruce, over-nice : 

I. I. 92. 
Neatnesse, tt., over-niceness, 

finicalness : 4. 6. 30. 
Neere, adv., comp. of near: 4. i. 

68. 
Neesing, «,, tsneezing [OE. 

niesen\ : 4. i. 9. 
Nest, n., a series or set of articles, 

generally of diminishing size : 

4. I. 21. 

Nicke, in phrase to set i' the nicke, 
to bet at the right moment (in 
a card game) : 4. 4. 166. 



294 



The Silent Woman 



Note, n., sign, symbol : 4. 4. 38. 

Noyse, n., ta company of mu- 
sicians, a band : 3. 3. 84, 3. 7. 2. 

Wtunber, «., measure, rhythm : 
4.1.51. 

Number, v., to summon : Dedic. 
II. 

Obnoxicus, adj.^ liable, subject : 
2. 2. 66 ; offensive : 3. 2. 3. 

Obstancy, «.,tsubstance, essence : 
5. 3. 106. 

Of, adv., toff: 4. 5. 144; prep., 
concerning: 3.6. 16. Cf. Abbott, 

§ 174. 
Oflfer, V. i. (in the phrase to offer 
at), to essay, to attempt : 4. i. 

45- 
On, prep., of: 4. I. 14. Cf. 

Abbott, § 181. 
Once, adv., tat once: 4. 5. 121 ; 

once for all : 4. 5. 36. 
Open, adj., free-spoken: i. 3. i ; 

frank, ingenious : 5. i. 79, 80. 
Open, v., to expound, interpret : 

5.3.86- 

Or, n. (Her.), the metal gold, 
often represented by a yellow 
color, and in engraving con- 
ventionally by dots upon a white 
ground : i. 4. 41. [L. aurum, 
OF. or, ME. or.] 

Or so. Cf. so. 

Ordinance, n., t cannon, ord- 
nance: I. 2. 16. 

Other, ad7'., Jotherwise: I. 3. 5. 
Cf. Abbott, § 12. 

Other, pro. sing, for pi. others : 
I. I. 43, 2. 3. 90. 

Pageant, n., a play or spectacle 
performed on a movable float 
or car : 3. 2. 60. 

Parget, v. i., tto paint; daub 
with paint : 5. 2. 36. 

Part, «., tact; action: 2. 4. 49, 



71; endowment, quality: 2. 5. 
28. 

Partake, v., to have a share in, 
to share (used tr.) : i. 3. 22, 
4. 4. 5. 

Party, n., particular person (now 
only vulgar) : 2. 4. 61, 2. 6. 14. 

Peitronell, n., a hand-firearm 
shorter than the harquebus, but 
longer than the pistol, intro- 
duced in the l6th century. It 
was fired by a match-lock, 
wheel-lock, or other appliance ; 
was fired resting against the 
breast, hence its name. The 
soldier protected himself from 
the recoil with a pad : 4. 5. 
no. 

Perfumer, n., one whose trade 
was making and selling per- 
fumes and cosmetics : 2. 2. no. 

Perruke, n., an artificial wig : 

1. I. 16, 119, 132, 4. 2. 89. 
tPerseuer, ij. i. (tform of perse- 
vere) : 4. I. ']']. 

Perswade, ■y.z.,to use persuasion : 

2. 2. 60; V. t., 5. 4. 6. 
Pest'ling, ppl. adj., pounding, 

pulverizing : 3. 3. 103. This 
word is apparently coined by 
Jonson, as no other example 
exists. 

Petarde, n., an engine of war used 
to blow in a door, gate, &c., 
consisting of a half-cone of 
thick iron filled with powder 
and ball, fastened to a plank ; 
the latter provided with hooks 
to be attached to the door or 
gate. Use of bombs made the 
petard obsolete: 4. 5. 219, 222. 

Pewterer, n., a worker in pewter : 
I. I. 160. 

Phant'sie, n., fantasy, caprice, 
whim : i. 2. 52. 

Physicke (Physique), «. (t forms 



Glossary 



295 



of^^K-y^V), medicine, drug: 2.2. 
157, 5. 2. 62. 

Pick- tooth, «., ta tooth-pick : 
2. 4. 143. 

Pike, n., a weapon made of a 
single spike, flat as the lance 
was, used previous to the 
bayonet by the infantry. In 
length it was twelve to fourteen 
feet. Under George III it be- 
came extinct : 4. 5. 109. 

Pipkin, n., a small earthen pot 
with or without a cover, and 
with a horizontal handle: 2. 5. 
118. 

tPlayse mouth, n. (tform of 
plaice-rciowth), having a small 
wry mouth like a plaice, or flat- 
fish : 3. 4. 41. 

Pleasant, adj., witty, facetious : 
5. I. 26. 

Poast, V. i. (tform of post), to 
travel rapidly : 2. 4. 104. 

Point, n., a lace with tags at the 
end, about six or eight inches 
long, made of silk, leather, or 
of three differently colored 
threads of yarn twisted together 
and having their ends wrapped 
with wire. They were used to 
fasten clothes together until the 
17th century, when pins were 
introduced. Sometimes used 
as small stakes at gambling : 

3- I. 54- 
Politie, n., tpolicy : 3. i. 20. 
Porcpisee, n. (tform oi porpoise) , 

a North Atlantic cetacean of 

the family Delphinidae : 4. 4. 

144. \V.. porcus, hog; piscis, 

fish.] 
Post, n., a messenger: 2. 4. 11. 
Post-horse, n., a horse kept or 

hired for forwarding post-riders 

or travelers with speed: i. i. 

27. 



Poulder, n. (t form of powder) : 
4. I. 106, 4. 5. zid,, passim. 

Poxe, n., a disease characterized 
by eruptive pocks or pustules 
upon the body; an EngHsh 
name for the Gallicus 7norbus, 
which is the significance here. 
In the 1 6th and 17th centuries 
it -usually means small pox : 

3. 5. 68. (The spelling is ir- 
regular for pocks, pi. oipock.) 

Poxe, interj., an imprecation : 

1. I. 86, 4. 2. 79, passiin. 
Precise, adj., tthe quality of being 

a Precisian, a Puritan : 2. 2. 80. 
Preferre, v., tto recommend : 

2. 5. II. 

Presently, adv., t instantly, im- 
mediately: 2. I. 18, 2. 4. 62, 
2. 5. ^'^, passim, 

Pretious,rt^'., (tform oi precious): 

4. I. 115. \L. pretiosus^ 
Prime-men, n., principal men : 

5- I- 34. 

Primero, n. Cf. note : 4. 4. 
167. 

Prineipall, n., chief, leader : 2. 5. 
69 ; original : 4. 5. 102. 

Prize, n., a contest: i. i. 181. 

Proctoi', n., an officer of the 
admiralty and ecclesiastical 
courts, whose duties and busi- , 
ness correspond exactly to those 
of an attorney at law or solicitor 
in chancery. — Black, Diet, of 
Law : 4. 7. 17, passim. 

Profess, v., to pretend, to assume: 
2. 4. 42. 

Progresse, n., a journey or circuit 
of state: 2. 2. 117. 

Propertie, n., a tool : 3. 3. 24. 

Protested, ppl. adj., t publicly 
avowed: 4. 5. 71. 

Pure, adj., tfine ; clean : 4. 6. 29. 

Purely, adv., greatly, remark- 
ably : 2. 6. 18. 



296 



The Silent Woman 



Purse-net, «., a net the mouth 
of which may be drawn close 
with cords : 3. 3. 94. 

Put i' the head, phr., to be 
angry: 3.3.4. No dictionary 
recognition of the phrase. 

Put to, v., to apply (to the test) : 
2. 3, 10; (with a pers. obj. of 
the verb and of the prep.) to 
consign to : 4. 4. loi ; (with a 
pers. obj. of the verb and an 
impers. obj. of the prep.) to try, 
to test: 2. 5. 65. 

Put vpon, v., to palm off on : 2. 4. 
42, 3. 6. 43 ; to set on : 4. 2. 149. 

Quarter-feast, 7t., a feast cele- 
brating Quarter-day, which was 
one of the four days fixed by 
custom as marking off the 
quarter of the year on which 
tenancy of houses usually begins 
and ends, and the payment of 
rent and other quarterly charges 
falls due ; in England and Ire- 
land these are Lady Day, 
Mar. 25 ; Midsummer Day, 
June 24 ; Michaelmas, Sept. 29 ; 
Christmas, Dec. 25 : 2. 4. no. 

Quit, v., +to acquit: i. i. 161; 
to requite : 3. 3. 59 ; +to be free, 
rid of: 5. 4. 30, 188. 

Bankness, «., textravagance : 4. 
5- 346. 

Rarely, adv., excellently, finely : 
4. 4. 64, 4. 5. 233. Very common 
in 17th century. 

Recouer, v., to get for, return to : 
4. 7- 36. 

Reference, n. (Law), in contracts, 
an agreement to submit to 
certain arbitrators matters in 
dispute between two or more 
parties for decision and agree- 
ment: 4. 7. 16. 



tReformado, «., a military officer 
whom disgrace had deprived of 
command, but retained his rank 
and perhaps his pay : 5. 2. 68. 

Religion, n., t conscientious 
scruple : 3. 5. 47. 

Relique, «. (+form of relic) : 5. 4. 

74. 

Resolue, v., to express by resolu- 
tion or vote : 4. 5. 140 ; tto free 
from doubt, to inform : 3. 2. 25, 
4. 7. 19; to prepare: 5. 4. 
100. 

Resolution, n., tdecision, judg- 
ment : 5.3.37, 5- 4- 147- 

tResty, adj. (a reduced form of 
restive), stubborn, obstinate : 
I. I. 175- 

Reuell, 71., a kind of dance or 
choric performance often given 
in connection with a masque or 
pageant : 3. 5. 50. [L. rebellare, 
same word as Mod. E. rebel, 
which is the learned as revel is 
the popular word through the 
Fr.] 

Reuersion, n. (Law), the residue 
of an estate left in the grantor, 
to commence in possession after 
the determination of some par- 
ticular estate granted out by 
him ; the return of land to the 
grantor and his heirs after the 
grant is over ; sometimes the 
promise of an ofifice to an 
aspirant after the resignation 
or death of the present in- 
cumbent : 2. 2. 45. 

Ring, n., a set of bells tuned to 
each other: 2. i. 8. Though 
Jonson seems to mean simply 
a bell, such as is common on 
doors. 

Rooke, «., fa simpleton, gull : i. 
4. 78, 3. 3. 2. 

Rose, n., a ribbon gathered into 



Glossary 



297 



the form of this flower, worn on 
hat, gown, or shoes : 2. 2. 68, 
70, 2. 5. 79. 

Ruffe, «., a projecting band or 
frill, plaited or bristling, worn 
about the neck : 2. 5. 79, 3. 2. 
22, 72. 

Hushe, n., a plant of the order 
Juncaceae, formerly used for 
strewing floors by way of cover- 
ing, in houses, the stage of the 
theatre, &c. : i. i. 22, 65. 

Sadnesse, n., t gravity, earnest : 

4- 3- 13- 
Sargeant, «., +a bailiff: 4. 5. 191. 
'Saue, interj. (abbreviation for the 

greeting), God save : i. 4. I, 
passiin. 
Scandale, «., offence : 4. 2. 139. 
Scene, «., a stage, the place 

where dramatic pieces are per- 
formed : ANOTHER I. [L. 

scena, stage.] 
Sciruy(tformof Jf«r7{y) : 4. 2. 75. 
tSempster, n., a man or woman 

employed in sewing: 2. 2. no. 

[OE. seaffies/re.] 
Seruant, n., tprofessed lover, 

authorized admirer (correlative 

of mistress) : I. I. 126, 2. 2. 129, 

2. 3- 15, 17, passitn. 
tSess, t/., assess, tax: 4. 5. 112. 
Set, v., to stake at play, wager : 

4. 4. 166. 
•j-Sew, v., to serve at table, as by 

carving, tasting, &:c. : 3. 7. 17 

MN. 
tSevsrer, «., a servant who waits 

at table : 3. 3. 66, 98 MN, 3. 7. 

19. 
Shame-fac'd, adj., modest : 3. 7. 

28. \VQrY!\&x\y shamefast. Fast 

is adj. meaning ' confirmed ', 

and shame ' modesty ' in a good 

sense.] 



Sharke, «., +a sharper, cheat 
swindler: 4. 4. 166. 

Shoo-thrid, n., a shoemaker's 
thread : 4. 2. 90. 

Showe, V. i., to appear, to look : 
I. I. 63. 

Shroue-tuesday, «., the Tuesday 
before the first day in Lent, or 
Ash Wednesday, so called from 
the custom of making confession 
on that day: I. i. 160, 3. I. 7. 
[OE. scrifan, to shrive.] 

Sicknesse, n., the plague ; a spe- 
cific application of the word in 
the language of the time: i. i. 
187. 

tSirrah, «., a word of address 
here equivalent to ' fellow ', 
often to ' sir ', with a contemp- 
tuous force: 2.5. 95, 3. 4. 51. 

Sixt, adj., sixth : 5. 3. 137. [OE. 
sixta.l^ 

Sleek, v., to iron, to smooth : 2. 
6. 42. 

t'Slid, interj., exclamation ab- 
breviated from God's {eye)h'd: 

1. 2. II. 

Slight, «. (t form of sleight) , a trick , 
contrivance: ANOTHER il. 

'Slight, interj., a contraction of 
by this light, or God's light : 

2. 3. 5, 2. 4. 2^,passiTn. 
Smocke, n., chemise: 2. 6. 42, 

5. I. 54. 

Snuffe, n. (from the phrase to take 
it in snuff, to grow angry), to go 
away in snuffe : 4. 5 . 1 70. 

So, adv. (phr. or so), or about 
thus ; or thereabouts ; or some- 
thing of that kind: 5. i. 54, 
5. 4. 114. 

Sooth, n., t cajolery, blandish- 
ment : 5. 2. 82, 

Sound, V. i., to cause something 
(as an instrument) to sound or 
play: 4. 2. 19. 



U 



298 



The Silent Woman 



Squire, n. (tform o{ square): 5. 

I. 19. 
State, n., 1 estate, income : 2, 2, 
144 ; style of living, mode of 
life: 2. I. 15. Besides these 
Jonson uses the word in all its 
varied senses. Cf. for its history 
W. and their Ways, p. 235. 
Stentor, n., a person having a 
powerful voice : 4. 2, 125. [L. 
Stentor, Gr. SreVrfop.] 
Stiffely, adv., stubbornly : i. I. 

154. 
Stile, n. (tform of style) : 2. 2. 

118. 
Still, adv., always, ever: AN- 
OTHER 3, 2. I. -i,!, passim. 
Stinkardly, adj., stinking, mean : 

4. 2. 109. 
ilStoicitie, n., stoical indiffer- 
ence: I. I. 66. A Jonsonian 
coinage. 
Suffer, 7'. i., to undergo punish- 
ment : 4. 5. 263. 
SuflBeient, adj., qualified, com- 
petent : 4. 7. 20. 
Superstitious, adj., + over-exact, 
scrupulous, beyond need : 5. 3. 
129. Cf. note. 
Sure, adv., surely : 4. 5. 208, 5. 3. 

239- 
Swabber, n., one who uses a 
swab ; hence, in contempt, a 
fellow fit only to use a swab : 
4. 4. 168. 

Take, v., to please, attract : I. i. 
67, lOI. 

Take up, v., tto stop : 4. 5. 41 ; 
to borrow or obtain for the pur- 
pose of borrowing : 1.4. 66, 67, 
71, 2. 5. 118. Cf. commodity, 
and note: 2. 5. 118. 

Tame, adj., sane : 4. 4. 102. 

Tane, j).p. (abbrev. form of) 
taken : 2. 6. 61. 



Target, n., a shield of any form, 
used in 17th century by in- 
fantry soldiers as a substitute 
for body armor : 4. 4. 18. 

Tell, v., to command : 4. 5. 298. 

Tempt, v., Jto try, test : 4. 5. 152, 
5. 4. 108. 

Terme,«.,a term of court: i. 1.50. 

Terme time, n., time during a 
term of court : 2. 5. 108. 

Then, adv. conj., than : 2. I. I, 
3- 5- 23, 3. 7- 6, 4. 6. 2% passim. 

Thriftily, adv., t punctiliously : 
5. 4. 238. 

IITinke, n., a tinkling sound : 2. 
3.41. This onomatopoetic word 
seems to be another Jonsonian 
coinage. 

To, prep., with : 3. 5. 88. Cf. 
Abbott, § 185; for: i. 3. 56, 

4. 4. 74, 4. 5. 288 ; against : i. 
2. 64. Cf. Abbott, 186. 

Tether, in the expression ' the 
tother ', a corruption of ' that 
other': 2. 2. 119, 2. 5. 80. 

Trow, interj. (abbreviated form 
of I trow), I wonder: 4. 5. 38, 

5. 2. 65. 

Truncheon, n., a staff of autho- 
rity : 1,3. 54. 

Trunke, n., ttube. Here a speak- 
ing tube : I. I. 194, 2. I. 2. 

Turbant, n. (tform of turban), 
' a Turkish hat of white and 
fine linen, wreathed into a 
rundle ; broad at the bottome 
to enclose the head, and lessen- 
ing, for ornament, towards the 
top'.^ — Cotgrave: I. I. 145. 

Twanging, adj., tfine, swinging : 
5. 3. 10. Cf. note. 

Tyranne, «. (tform of tyrant) : 
2. 2. Tjf ; tyrannie: 3. 2. 10. 

Tyre, «., attire ; headdress : 3. 3. 
Ill, 4. I. 61, 118 (a simphfied 
form of tiara). 



Glossary 



299 



i Tyre-woman, «., a female 
dresser, a lady's maid : 2. 2. 1 10. 

tVegetous, «<^'., vigorous, active : 

2. 2. 67. 
Venter, v. i., venture: I. 2. 21, 

2. 2. 6. 
Visor, «., pretence : 2. 4. 36, 4. 5. 

62. 
Vnder-take, v. i., J to assume a 

responsibility: 4. 5. 318; to 

promise, warrant : 5. 4. 252. 
Voyce, n., tterm, word: 4. 7. 

15- 
Vp-braid, z/.?., to offer as a charge 

against something: 4. 5. 275, 

Cf. note. 
Vpon, prep., at : 4. 5. 330. Cf. 

Abbott, § 180. 
Vrge, v., tto provoke, incite, ex- 
asperate : 4. I. 10, 
Vsher, n., gentleman-usher : 2, 2. 

109, Cf. note, I. 4. 58. 
Vtter, 7/., tto dispose of to the 

public in the way of trade : 4. 

6. 4. Cf. note. 

Waight, n. (tform of wait), night 
musician, street player: i. I. 
164. Cf. note. 

Water-man, n., a boatman or 
ferryman of the Thames : 3, 4. 

31- 
"Weake, adj., injudicious : 2. 4. 
26, 71. 



Well, adj. (used pred), happy, 
well off: 2. 6. 66 ; out of trouble : 

4. 2. 147, 5. 3. 179. 
Welt, «., tan applied hem, a 

bordering, fringe : 4. 7. 43, 
Whiniling, adj. Cf. note, 4. 5. 

231. 
Whitsontide, «., the season of 

Pentecost, comprehending the 

entire week following Pentecost 

Sunday: 3. i. 7. 
Whitsun - holy - day, «., the 

seventh Sunday after Easter, in 

commemoration of the descent 

of the Holy Spirit on the day of 

Pentecost : 3. i. 48. 
tWhorson, adj., bastard-like, 

scurvy : 5. 3. 193. 
Will, V. (used tr. with pers. obj.), 

to bid, request : 3. 3. 12. 
tWindore, n. (a perversion of 

window) : i. 1. 179, 189, 2. 2. 26. 
Wind-sucker, n., a hawk known 

as wind-hover or kestrel : I. 4. 

T]. Cf. notes, i. 4. T^, 4. 4. 192. 
Wire, n., material used to stiffen 

garments, and to dress hair 

upon : 2. 5. 78, 3. 2. 72. 
With, prep., to : 2. 6. 52. Cf. 

Abbott, § 194 ; by, used very 

rarely with an agent : 5. 2. 24. 

Cf. Abbott, § 193. 
Witty, adj., twise, clever: 4. i. 

94. 
Wood, «., a crowd : 2. 2. 82. 



U a 



INDEX 



Abbott, E. A., Sh. Gram., cited, 
136, 137, 146, 151, 154, 156, 
161, 176, 182, 183, 188, 192, 
194, 199-201, 237, 259, 264, 
271-73, et al. 

Actors of Epiccene, xxiiiff., 123, 
274 fiF. 

Acts and Monuments, 149. 

^thelred II, 166, 167. 

Ajax, of Sophocles, liii ; meta- 
morphosis of, 250. 

Alchemist, cited, 1 5 2, 157, 169, 
171, 180, 185, 192, 200, 212, 
213, 236, 243, 249. 

Aldgate, 140. 

All Hid, 252. 

AUin, Richard, actor, 276. 

All's Well, cited, 160, 167. 

Almanacs, 150. 

Alsatia, 128, 

Avtadis de Gaul, 221. 

Anabaptist, 198. 

Anagrams, 236. 

Angels, coin, 204 ; good and bad, 
238. 

Animal Amphibium, pun, 156. 

Antony and Cleopatra, cited, 161, 
208 ; alleged ref. in Epiccene, 

239- 

Antwerp Polyglot, 180. 
Aquinas, St. Thomas, liii, 270. 
Aristotle, definition of poetry, Ixxi ; 

Jonson's opinion of, 177. 
Armorers, 144. 
Arras, 245. 
Ars Amatoria, a source of Epi- 

caene, xli ff. ; cited, 22 1, 224, et al. 
Artemidorus, 200. 



Ascham, Roger, cited, 153, 156, 

169, 258. 
Astley, Sir John, 277. 
Astrology, 152. 
As You Like It, cited, 136, 

272. 
AthencBum, cited, 124, 274. 
Attawel, Hugh, actor, 275. 
Ausonius, 179. 
Ayliffe, John, Parergon luris 

Canonici Anglicani, cited, 266, 

269. 

B 

Bake-house, 207. 

Balls of soap, 210. 

Bank Side, 195. 

Banns of marriage, 182. 

Barber, knack with his shears, 
152; -shop, 210; as a dentist, 
212 ; -pole, 212. 

Barksted, William, actor, 276. 

Bartholomew Fair, cited, 137, 
144-5, 154, 162, 169, 171, 174, 
185, 190, 202, 204-5, 211, 218, 
220, 274. 

Bath, a fashionable resort, 172. 

Bear, at the Bridge-Foot, 190 ; 
-baiting, 228-9 '1 Garden, 193, 
195 ; -ward, 147. 

Beaumont, Francis, Upon the 
Silent Woman, 129. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, cited, 
Woman Hater, 176 ; Philaster, 
xli, 186, 220, 240 ; Nice Valour, 
208; Scornful Lady, 214; Elder 
Brother, 245 ; Little French 
Lawyer, 246 ; Coxco7nb, 250 ; 
Monsieur Thomas, 259. 

Because, 124, 251. 



Index 



301 



Bed'Iem, 236. 
Begging property, 256. 
Bell-man, 146 ; bells of London, 

148. 
Besant, Walter, London, cited, 

148, 165, 195, 200, 205. 
Betrothal, 188. 
Betting, 135. 
Biggin, 215. 
Billingsgate, 239. 
Bishop, J. P., Mar. and Div., 

cited, 266, 268-9. 
Blackstone, Sir William, cited, 149, 

179, 180, 244, 256, 266, 267, 270, 

272. 
Blanketting, 27 1. 
Blunt, J. H., cited, 266, 267, 268, 

269, et al. 
Boccaccio, 153. 
Bowling, 135 ; -green, 135. 
Brake, 253. 
Brand, John, Pop. Antiq., cited, 

145, 17S> 197, 202 ff., 211 ff., 

233> 252. 
Brasier, 144. ' 
Breeches, great hose, 248. 
Bridal, -customs, 214 ff . ; colors, 

215 ; -cup, 217; -dinner, 218. 
Broom-men, 144. 
Brown-baker, 191. 
Buc, Sir George, 277. 
Burton, Robert, Anat. of Mel., 

cited, 170, 190, 219, 222. 
Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, cited, 

248. 
Busbec, Augier Ghislen de, liii. 



Cadiz, 159. 

Caliver, 246. 

Canon Law, liii, 180, 242, 262 ff. ; 

verse of, 270. 
Captain, 203. 
Carie, Gil., actor, 275. 
Carpet, 251. 
Carting of bawds, 211. 



Carving, at table, 221 ; lanterns, 

211. 
Case is Altered, cited, 141. 
Cataline, cited, 125, 139, 14I, 151, 

176, 183, 199, 221, 264. 
Catastrophe, defined by Jonson, 

251. 
Catullus, a reference to, 231. 
Cawarden, Sir Thomas, 123, 

276. 
Censuring of poets, 172. 
Chance-medley, 213. 
Chapman, George, 157 ; cited, 

Monsieur d'' Olive, 230 ; Bussy 

d'Ambois, 274-5. 
Chaucer, use of Ars Amatoria, 

xlii ; rents dwelling in Aldgate, 

141 ; cited, 150, 153, 168, 198, 

206, 220, 255, 273. 
Cheapside, 226. 
Cherries, 144, 226. 
Children of her Majesty's Revels, 

xxii, 123, 274. 
Chimney-sweeper, 143. 
China-house, 155 ; -stuffs, 200. 
Chorus, in English drama, 245. 
Christmas Carol, Scrooge and 

Morose, lix. 
Cittern, 209. 

City Match, Jasper Mayne's, mo- 
deled on Epiccene, Ivii ff. ; cited, 

149, 166, 182, 189, 215, 219, 231, 

241. 
City's Love and Charity, 141. 
Civil Law, 179. 
Cleaveland, John, cited, 127. 
Clogdogdo, 231. 
Cloth-workers, 204. 
Coaches, introduced into England, 

159. 
Cock-pit, 237, 238. 
Coleharbor, 189. 
Coleridge, S. T., cited, xxvi, Ixi, 

Ixviii, 146, 192. 
College, 138. 
Collier, 213. 



302 



77!^ Silent Woman 



Colman, George, adaptation of 

Epiccene, xviii ff. 
Comedy, defined, Ixxi. 
Comedy of Errors, cited, 207, 
Commodity, to take up the, 191. 
Compliment, 141, 214. 
Conduit, 207. 
Conjurer, 175. 
Constantinople, 192. 
Conversations with Drumtnond, 

cited, xxiii, 173, 177, 178, 179, 

275. 
Coriolanus, cited, 132, 161, 215, 

271, 273. 
Coronation-day, 150-1, 
Costard-monger, 144. 
Cranes, The Three, 190. 
Creighton, Charles, History of 

Epidemics, cited, 133, 210. 
Crocodile, 273. 
Cue, 183, 

Cunning-woman, 175, 241. 
Cut, 186. 

Cymbeline, cited, 133. 
Cynthia's Revels, Asotus, Ixx ; 

cited, 131, 133, 153, 174, 184, 

188, 189, 193, 198, 215, 218, 

221, 225, 231, 233, 259, 260, 
264, 274. 

D 

Dagger, 161, 246, 255. 
Damon and Pythias, 252. 
Dancing, 219 ; -school, 191. 
Daniel, Samuel, censor of the 

Children of the Revels, 124; 

cited, 167 ; relation to Jonson, 

173- 

Davenant, William, cited, The 
Wits, 191, 208; Love and 
Honour, 210. 

Decameron, 153. 

Dekker, Thomas, satirized by 
Jonson, 126; cited, Z?ra»z. Wks., 
142, 170, 176, 189, 198, 202, 208, 
209, 211, 223, 225, 233, 238, 250, 



252,257; Pr. Wks., 126, 128, 
131, 132, 134-9, 141, 145-8, 
153-4, 159, 160-1, 163, 180, 1 84, 
191-2, 194, 203, 205, 210, 212- 
13, 219,223, 225-9, 230, 232, 244, 
249, 255, 257-60, 263, et al. 

Devil is an Ass, cited, 125, 131, 
138-9, 168, 170, 186, 190, 198, 
200, 202, 221, 230, 258. 

Dinner, -hour, 154 ; menu, 1 57-8 ; 
wedding-, 218. 

Discipline, 267. 

Discoveries, cited, 125, 130, 173, 
I 7978 I. 

Disguise, a fashion, 174-5. 

Divine, 242. 

Divorce, history, 242; in James I's 
day, 262 ff. ; defined, 265. 

Doctor, 264-5. 

Dol Tearsheet, 192. 

Domine, 264-5. 

Don, 259. 

Don Quixote, 155, 221. 

Doni's Philosophy, 240. 

Doublets, 168, 200. 

Drake, Nathan, Sh. and his Times, 
cited, 139, 141, 154, 161, 188, 
197, 203, 222, 235. 

Dreams, 199. 

Droning a tobacco pipe, 223. 

Drunkenness, 190, 233. 

Dryden, criticisms of Epicane, 
xxiii, Ixi, Ixii, Ixv, Ixviii, Ixix, 
Ixxii. 

Dutch, 180. 

E 

Ear-wigs, 271. 

Earle, John, Micro-Cosmographie, 
cited, 136-7, 145-6, 153, 169, 
180, 184-5, 190, 203, 210, 223, 

249, 253- 

Easter, 197. 

Eastward Ho, by Marston, Chap- 
man, and Jonson, 157 ; cited,, 
241, 

Eat words, 272. 



Index 



303 



Edward the Confessor, 166. 

Egypt's plagues, 210. 

Eltham, 264. 

Embroidery, fashion for, 170. 

Epucene, editions, ix ff. ; adapta- 
tions, xviii ff. ; translations, xx ; 
date and history, xxiiff.; sources, 
xxviii ff. ; imitated, Ivii ff. ; the 
plot, Ixii ff. ; structure, Ixiv ff. ; 
purpose, Ixv ff. ; characters, 
Ixvii ff, ; classification, Ixxi ; 
Epiccene, 123. 

Epigrams, Jonson's cited, 128, 

131, 138, 157, 174, I95» 231, 

250, 259, 264. 
Epithalamium, 216. 
Essayists, Jonson's opinion of, 177, 
Every Man in his Humour, 

Mathew, Ixx ; cited, 161, 173, 

249, 252-3, 262. 
Every Man out of his Humour, 

Clove, Ixx; cited, 126-7, I4i> 

149, 157, 184-5, 192, 194, 205, 

218, 223, 225, 253. 
Exchange, Royal and New, 155. 
Eye of the Land, 160. 



Fairies, 261. 

Fans, 187. 

Fashionable men, 136. 

Feathers, 137 ; -men, 171. 

Fencing, 181, 247. 

Fidelia, 260. 

Fidlers, 202 ff. 

Field, Nathaniel, 124, 274, 275 ; 
W. is a Weathercock, cited, 131, 
203,254,261,275; Afnendsfor 
Ladies, cited, 201, 206, 214, 234, 
275. 

Fish- wives, 142. 

Flaccus, Valerius, 179. 

Fleay, F. G., cited, 123-4, 128, 

274-5- 
Flecknoe, Richard, cited, 124 

275. 



Folios of Epicoene, 1616, xiii ff. ; 
1640, XV ; 1692, XV. 

Footmen, 170. 

Foreman, Dr. Simon, 227. 

Forest, Jonson's, cited, 125. 

French acrobats, 167 ; intelligen- 
ces, 186 ; puppets, 205 ; tailors, 
225 ; hermaphrodite, 253. 

Fuller, Th., cited, 239, 262, 273. 

Fury, 220. 

G 

Gallery, of the stage, 244. 

Galley-foist, 234. 

Garrick, David, production of 
Epiccene, xxv. 

Garters, wedding-, 216. 

Gay, John, cited, 212, 227. 

Gentleman-usher, 158, 170. 

George Stone, the bear, 197. 

German clock, 232. 

Gifford, William, edition of Epi- 
ccene, xvii ; defense of Morose, 
Ixix ; cited, 157, 162, et al. 

Gloves, wedding-, 214. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, She Stoops to 
Conquer, xxvi, lix; Good Nat. 
Man, cited, 185. 

Gosson, Stephen, cited, 135, 155- 
8, 165, 186-7, 223. 

Gown, civil, 257. 

Grammar, Jonson's English, 
cited, 201. 

Greene, Robert, Groaf s-worth 0/ 
Wit, 241 ; cited, 137, 191, 213, 
248, 257, et al. 

Grooms, 170, 216. 

Guelphs and Ghibellines, 245. 

H 

Hair, fashion for women, 186; for 

men, 210. 
Hallam, Henry, Lit. of Europe, 

cited, 180-1. 
Hamlet, cited, 161, 168, 198, 246. 
Hammer-man, 144. 



304 



The Silent Woman 



Harpocrates, 162. 

Harrington, Sir John, 243, 250. 

Hautboys, 146. 

Hawking, 244. 

Hazlitt, W. C, cited, 124, 152, 

165. 
Health drinking, 202, 217, 233. 
Hell-Hounds, 234. 
HeracUdae, of Euripides, liii. 

1 Henry IV, cited, 133, 135, 152, 
157, 198, 204, 249,252. 

2 Hetiry IV, cited, 137, 156, 163, 
192, 202, 220, 225, 238. 

Henry V, cited, 149, 156, 194, 214. 
I Henry VI, cited, 151. 

3 Henry VI, cited, 207, 259. 
Henry VIII, cited, 244. 
Heralds, 218. 
Hermaphrodite, 138, 253. 
Herrick, Robert, Hesperides, cited, 

215, 216. 
Hindley, Charles, Cries of London, 

cited, 143 ff. 
Hilts, 252. 
His, for gen. 's, 201. 
Hobby-horse, 237. 
Hogs' bones, in cosmetics, 231. 
Homer, Jonson's criticism of, 177. 
Horace, in Eptccene, liv, Ivi ; cited, 

124, 129, 130, 208; Jonson's 

criticism of, 178. 
Horning, 217, 260. 
Horse-race, 134. 
Hunting-match, 134. 
Huon de Boitrdeaux, in Eptccene, 

liv. 
Hymen, 209. 

I 

Impediments to marriage, (i) 
error, 266 ; (2) conditio, (3) 
vohtm, (4) cognatio, 267 ; (5) 
crimen adulterii, (6) cultus 
disparitas, (7) vis, (8) or do, 
(9) ligamen, 268 ; (10) publice 
honestas, (ll) affinitas exforni- 
catiotie, {ii) frigiditas, 269. 



Infantry that follow the court, 207. 
Innocent, 153, 205. 
Ireland, 192. 
Island Voyage, 159. 
Italian, 258. 

Jerkin, 158. 

Jewelry, fashion for, 170. 

Johnson, Samuel, cited, 142, 182. 

Jonson, Ben, annuity, 126; charged 
with personal satire, 126, 130, 
257 ; mentioned in his own 
works, 174 ; love of a jest, 183 ; 
in Satiromastix, 225, 257, 271, 
277 ; actor of Morose, 274 ; 
reversion of Master of Revels, 
277 ; for citations, cf. individual 
works. Alchemist, &c. 

Julius Caesar, cited, 152, 245, 252. 

Justice of the Peace's Hall, 247. 

Juvenal, Sat. 6 and Epicoene, 
xliv ff., 1 ff. ; parallel expres- 
sions, 163, 172, 274 ; Jonson's 
criticism of, 178. 

K 
Kate Common, 192. 
Kestrils, 244. 
King John, cited, 141, 157, 159, 

188, 246. 
King of Spain's Bible, 180. 
Kissing, the fashion of, 183, 254, 
Kynaston, as Epicoene, xxiii ff. 



Lace, introduced into England, 

185. 
Ladanum, 242. 
Lafond, Ernest, translation of 

Epiccene, xxi. 
Latin and Greek, in women's 

education, 169. 
Latinisms in Jonson's prose, 172, 

221, 238, 260. 
Latinized spelling, 123. 
Leaping over stools, 225, 259. 



Index 



305 



Lear, cited, 127, 206. 

Lee, Sidney, William Shake- 
speare, cited, xliv. 

Leg, to make a, 160, 274. 

L'Envoi, 263. 

Lhuyd, Edward, ArchcEologia 
Brit., cited, xlii. 

Libanius, a source of Epicaene, 
xxviii ff. 

Libellus, defined, 270. 

Linen, 253. 

Livy, Jonson's criticism of, 177. 

London Bridge, 163. 

Long sword, 246. 

Love-locks, 210. 

Love's Labour's Lost, cited, 139, 
184-5, 194, 198, 217, 232, 250, 
252. 

Lucan, Jonson's criticism of, 178. 

Lycophron, 178. 

Lyiy, John, cited, Euphues, 127 ; 
My das, 152,210; Campaspe, 185, 
214, 249, 272-3 ; Sapho, 199. 

M 
Mad folks, a public spectacle, 

166, 236. 
Magnetic Lady, cited, 126, 130-2, 

174, 202, 211, 251. 
Maitland, F. W., Canon Law, 

cited, 262, 268. 
Mandrake, 231, 
Mankind generation, 271. 
Manningham, John, record of 

Twelfth Night, xxxv. 
Manslaughter, in James I's reign^ 

256. 
Markham, Gervase, cited, 157, 

244. 

Marriage, 242 ; Biblical laws, 
267, 268. 

Marston, John, satirized by Jon- 
son, 126 ; author of Eastward 
Ho, 157; referred to in Epiccene, 
174; cited, 2 Ant. and Mel., 
207; Dutch Courtezan, 186, 



205, 211, 220, 254, 260; Mal- 
content, 138, 171, 186, 203, 219, 
261. 

Martial, Jonson's criticism of, 178; 
cited, 130, 202. 

Mary Ambree, 233. 

Masks, 174-5. 

Masques, 164 ; Jonson's, cited, 
123, 127, 129, 162, 167, 
174, 192, 197, 202, 211, 216, 
261. 

Massinger, Philip, Sir Giles Over- 
reach, Ixvii ; cited. Par. of Love, 
207 ; New Way to Pay Old 
Debts, 208 ; Rojnan Actor, 263 ; 
and Field, 275. 

Master, the title, 149, 263 ; of the 
Garden, 196 ; of the Revels, 
276. 

May-Day, 234. 

Mayor, Lord, 234-5. 

Measure for Measure, cited, 151, 
214. 

Medea, 227. 

Melancholy, 184, 239. 

Mercer, 172. 

Merchant of Venice, Shylock, 
bcvii; cited, 139, 146, 149, 199, 
208. 

Mercury, 231. 

Meres, Francis, Palladis Tamia, 
xliii. 

Mermaid, ed. oi Epiccene, xviii. 

Merry Wives of Windsor, Fal- 
staff, xli ; cited, 175, 194, 201, 
215,221,244, 255. 

Middleton, Thomas, cited, Mi- 
chaebnas Term, 137, i2>6; Father 
Hubburd's Tale, 155; Roaring 
Girl, 171, 186; Black Book, 
189; Mayor of Quiti., 209 ; A 
Mad World, 232 ; Blurt, 243. 

Moldavia, 258. 

Mole, mule, 184. 

Moli^re, Ix flf. 

Motions, 205, 250. 



3o6 



The Silent Woman 



Mountebanks, 228. 

Much Ado, cited, 133, 163, 184, 

186, 199, 237, 246, 272. 
Muskets, 247, 

N 

Nares, Robert, Glossary, cited, 
137, 156, 206, 243, 2S(),etal. 

Near, as comp. adv., 224. 

Ned Whiting, the bear, 197. 

Neesing, 219. 

New Inn, cited, 211, 246, 251, 
271. 

Night-caps, 142. 

Night-crow, 207. 

Noise, a band, 202, 217. 

Nomentack, 258. 

Notes and Queries, cited, xi, Iv, 
146, 204, 217. 



Omens, cf. Dreams, Night-crow, 

Owl. 
Opium, 242. 
Orange- women, 142. 
Ordinaries, 128, 188. 
Ordish, T. F., cited, 151, 195-6, 

228, et al. 
Ostend, xlviii, 224. 
Othello, cited, 185, 210. 
Overbury, Thomas, Characters, 

cited, 161, 184,205,249; death, 

269. 
Ovid, influence in European litera- 
ture, xli fif. ; in Shakespeare, xliii ; 

a source oi Eptccene, xliv ff. Cf. 

Ars A mat or ia. 
Owl, 206. 



Page, 131, 255. 

Pageant, 199 ff. 

Paracelsus, 239. 

Paris Garden, 195. 

Parishes, in sixteenth century, 145. 

Parson, 264. 



Pasiphae, 203. 

Pauca Verba, 194. 

Pen, William, actor, 276. 

Penelope, xlviii. 

Pepper-corn, 135. 

Pepys, S., Diary, cited, xxiii-iv, 

148-9, 151, 190, 229, 238, 247. 
Perfume, 139, 196. 
Persius, 179. 
Peruke, 132. 
Pewterers, 145. 
Phillimore, E., Eccles. Law, cited, 

226, 242, 266. 
Philter, 227. 
Physician, 241. 
Pindar, 177. 
Pins, 137. 

Plague of London, 133-4. 
Planch^, J. R., ^ Cycl. ofCosttime, 

cited, 170, 187. 
Plantation of Ulster, 158, 1 92. 
Plato, echoed in Epiccene, liv ; 

Jonson's criticism of, 177. 
Plautus, Casina a source of Epi- 

ccene, xxxiv, 230 ; echoes in Epi- 

ccene oi Bacch., xxxiv, 184, 231 ; 

Aulularia, xxxv ; Menaech., 

XXXV ; Asinaria, liv. 
Play- writing, its purpose, 126, 129. 
Poet, defined by Jonson, 181. 
Poetaster, Tucca and Ovid Sen., 

Ixx; cited, 125, 130, 137, 151, 

160, 162, 181, 183, 196, 198, 225, 

231, 249, 256-7. 
Politian, 179. 
Pomponatius, 180. 
Pox, morbus gallicus, 210. 
'Prentices, 145. 
Primero, 243. 
Progresses, royal, 172. 
Prologue, 126. 
Prynne, William, cited, 123, 210, 

et al. 
Public shows, 222. 
Puritan, The, cited, 190, 197, 

254. 



Index 



307 



Puritans, satirized by Jonson, 

165, 169, 192. 
Pylades and Orestes, 255. 
Pythagoreans, 162. 

Q 

Quartos of Eptccette, 1609 and 
1612, xfF. ; 1620, xivff. 

R 

Rack, as punishment, 132. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, club at the 

Mermaid, 124 ; importer of 

oranges, 143 ; tobacco, 224. 
Rapier, 255. 
Ratcliff, 235. 
Raynard the Fox, 240. 
Recreant, 272. 
Reformados, 262. 
Revels, 209 ; Master of, 276. 
Richard III, cited, 207. 
Richardson, Mrs., adaptation of 

Epiccene, xx. 
Riddles, 226, 258. 
Rival Friends, Peter Hansted's, 

Iviii ff. 
Romeo and Juliet, cited, 133, 136, 

199, 233, 245-6. 
Rope-walking, 167. 
Roses, 168. 
Round, walk the, 249. 
Ruffs, 186. 
Rushes, 133. 

S 
Sad Shepherd, cited, 272. 
Sadler's horse, 220, 
Saint Andrew, of Scotland, 229. 
Saint Chrysostom, an echo in 

Epicoene, Iv. 
Saint George, of England, 229. 
Saint Mary le Bow, 163, 
Saint Paul's Cathedral, 164. 
Salisbury, racing at, 172. 
Satiromastix, 225, 252, 257, 271, 

277. 



Scarf, 188. 

Schlegel, A. W. von, Dram. Art 
and Lit., cited, Ixii. 

Scott, Walter, Fortunes of Nigel, 
cited, 128-9, 152} 210, 243. 

Scrivener, 258. 

Sejanus, cited, 125, 139, 162, 169, 
203, 232. 

Selden, John, Table Talk, cited, 
157, 161, 211, 219, 264. 

Sempster, 171. 

Seneca, 177; the tragedian, 178. 

Sergeant, 249. 

Servants, lovers, 141 ; treatment 
of household, 169,208. 

Set in the nick, 243. 

Shadwell, Thomas, xv ; opinion 
oi Epicoene, xxiv ; cited, 128. 

Shakespeare, William, Twelfth 
Night, a source of Epiccene, 
XXXV ff. ; and Ovid, xliii ; Shy- 
lock, Ixvii ; for citations, cf. in- 
dividual works, AlPs Well, &c. 

Shall and will, 167. 

Shrove Tuesday, 145, 194, 238. 

Sick Man's Salve, Thomas 
Bacon's, 240. 

Siddons, Mrs., as Epicoene, xxv. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, definition of 
poetry, Ixxi ; Jonson's estimate 
of, 181. 

Signs, barber's-pole, 212 ; sadler's, 
220. 

Silenced brethren, 169. 

Silver dishes, 201. 

Silver Street, 231. 

Simancas, Diego, cf. Symancha. 

Sir, a title, 263-5. 

Sleeves, 186. 

Small, R. A., Stage-Quarrel, cited, 
126, 173- 

Smith, itinerant, 144. 

Smith, John, actor, 276. 

Snuff, to go away in, 249. 

Song, Still to be Neat, source, 
Iv-vi ; 140. 



3o8 



77?^ Silent Woman 



Spectator, cited, lix, 142, 180,261. 

Spenser, Edmund, Jonson's criti- 
cism of, 173 ; cited, 206, 273. 

Sphinx, 193. 

Spurs, 230, 

Stansby, William, 124. 

Staple of News, Madrigal, Ixx ; 
cited, 129, 130, 138, 156, 173, 
182, 207, 218, 232, 236, 251, 
253,271. 

Stationers'' Registers, cited, x, xxii. 

Statius, 179. 

Stockings, 196, 254. 

Stow, John, Survey of London, 
cited, 140, 141, 149, 163, 187, 
193, 207, 235, 239. 

Strand, 155, 231. 

Strange sights, 166. 

Street, cries, 142 ff. ; lighting, 
147 ; order in, 161. 

Strutt, Joseph, cited, 134-5, 148-9, 
168, 209, 222, 247. 

Stuart, Sir Francis, 1 24. 

Stubbes, Phillip, Anat. of Abuses, 
138-9, 149, 152, 159, 170, 175, 
x86-8, 190, 196, 210, 219, 223, 
253,255,263. 

Suetonius, quoted in Epiccene, Ivi. 

Swearing, 150- 1. 

Swinburne, A. C, cited, xxiii, Ixii. 

Symancha, 180. 

Symonds, J. A., cited, xxvii, Ixii, 
140. 



Tacitus, Jonson's criticism of, 

177. 
Taine, H. A., Eng. Lit., cited, 

Ixii, Ixiv, Ixviii. 
Tale of a Tub, cited, 146, 202, 

204, 215, 218. 
Taming of the Shrew, cited, 127, 

194, 201. 
Tatler, cited, 1 46. 
Taylor, John (the Water Poet), 

cited, 145, 154, 205. 



Tempest, cited, 166, 175, 217,234. 

Tennis, 149. 

Terence, in Epiccene, Iv ; cited, 

Andria, 126. 
Term, 136. 
Terrible boys, 156. 
Thames, xlix ; 163. 
Then, comp. adv., 161. 
Thornbury, G. W., Shakespere's 

England, cited, 134, 166, 2cx), 

263, et al. 
Thucydides, Jonson's criticism of, 

177. 
Tieck, Ludwig, translation of 

Epiccene, xxi. 
Tilney, Edmund, 277. 
Tilting, 222. 
Titivilitium, 230. 
Titus Andronicus, cited, 217. 
Toasts and butter, 198. 
Tobacco, 223-4. 
Tooth- picks, 183. 
Tower Wharf, 150-I, 239. 
Tragi-comedy, 245. 
Tripoly, 259. 
Tritons, 230. 
Troilus and Cressida, cited, 132, 

199. 
Trumpeters, 146, 202. 
Tuer, A. W., Old London Street 

Cries, cited, 143 ff. 
Twelfth Night, a source oi Epi- 
ccene, XXXV fF. ; cited, 169, 201, 

204, 213,219, 233. 
Twiss, Richard, Travels, cited, xx. 
Two Gentlemen of Verona, cited, 

133, 141, 158, 188, 220. 
Two-hand sword, 246. 



U 

Under correction, 194. 

Undertaker, 125. 

Underwoods, cited, 123, 125, 152, 

164, 173-5, i8i> 222, 226, 236, 

253, 273, et al. 



';f^k:M. 



ERRATA. 



Page xxiii, last line, /or Kinaston read Kynaston. 
„ 142, 1. j8, for Planche read Planche. Also on pp. 170, 1S7, 282. 
., 195, 1. 9 from bottom, _/br collige read college. 
,, 215, 1. 13 from bottom, y^r favours-blue read iavors — blue. 
„ 230, 1. 6 from bottom, /or Manly, Predecessors 0/ Shakespeare, p. 326 

r^a^/ Manly, Pre-Shakesperian Drama 1. 326. 
,, 241, 1. 10, for Vir esset read virescit, 
„ 244, 1. II from bottom, /or Gervaise r^a^ Gervase. 
,, 283, 1. 2 2, /or Swinburne, A. G. riffl^ Swinburne, A. C. 

Epiccene.'\ 



I 



The Silent Woman 



309 



Vacation, 189. 

Vatablus, 180. 

Vaulters, 167. 

Velvet, 197. 

Virgil, lines parodied in Epiccene, 

Ixi ; Jonson's criticism of, 178. 
Virginia, 192. 
Volpone, a source of, in Libanius, 

xxxiii ; cited, 125, 128, 129, 

148, 183, 211, 215, 238, 240, 

256, 273, 274. 

W 

Wagers, 130. 

Waits, 146. 

Ward, A. W., Hisi. of Eng. 

Dram., cited, Ixii, Ixix, Ixx ; 

200, 277. 
Ware, great bed of, 259. 
Warton, Thomas, Eng. Lit., cited, 

xlii. 
Waterman, 204. 



Webster, John, cited. White Devil, 

207 ; Northward Ho, 236. 
Weh, 257. 
Wendell, B., William Shake- 

spere, cited, xliv. 
Westminster, 235 ; -Hall, 238. 
Whalley, Peter, edition of Jonson, 

xvi. 
Whitefriars, 124, 128. 
Whitehall, 138, 149, 172, 197. 
White-mane, 135. 
Whitsunday, 194, 197. 
Windsucker, 160. 
Wine, 126, 217. 
Winter's Tale, cited, 253, 261, 

271. 
Wire, 127, 186. 
Woodcocks, as food, 157; an 

epithet, 198. 
Worsted, 196. 



Your, 161. 



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